farewell tour live at the renshaws
July 5th - 20th. 2025
4 Prospect St Fortitude Valley QLD.
A new exhibition by Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier At The Renshaws’.
JULY 5th, 2025 OPENING NIGHT PERFORMANCE
catalogue
Farewell Tour is an ambient psych-rock band by Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier that EMERGes FROM a cathartic response to grief and joy.
Key concepts include the interplay of textiles and sounds, the relationship between play and resistance, and the connection between art and life/death. An exhibition about love, grief, and time through the lens of a psych-rock band's final performance.
An exhibition of visual objects related to sound; such as, gobos, painted records, and posters; acting as both merch and archival material. Coinciding with an opening night performance of ambient psych music that blends field recordings, guitar, and vocals,. Expressing themes of love, death, and loss, the band operates under the concept of “…an epic love story of a band where every song is their last. A never ending farewell tour.” The band's entire existence is a continuous, drawn-out goodbye, lending a unique urgency and finality to each performance and recording. Every song is a farewell and every concert a culminating event; yet the band seeks to go on as long as it can, in a perpetual state of epilogue and reinvention. This meta-narrative invites audiences into the transient present of life, into the soft lines between the band's reality and its fateful mythology.
Farewell Tour engages visually in its own archive and memorabilia as an art project. The visual elements both come from, and contribute to, an archival history; incorporating documentary photos and performance ephemera to create a rich multi-layered band narrative. a "never-ending farewell tour" that invites viewers into this existential crisis. It addresses music as refuge and a way to slow time, using a vintage aesthetic with a "flower power" motif. Gobos serve as a practical and symbolic element, representing barriers and intimate spaces. The opening event is envisioned as an "order of service" blending a rock show, art exhibition, and memorial service.
exhibition preparation at higher ground studio - slideshow
