farewell tour live at the renshaws

July 5th - 20th. 2025

4 Prospect St Fortitude Valley QLD.

LINK TO catalogue

A new exhibition by Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier At The Renshaws’.

JULY 5th, 2025 OPENING NIGHT PERFORMANCE ON BANDCAMP LINK

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 the artist’s personal 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

Dear Joe and Chanelle,

This Is Not a Love Song, it’s a letter. It’s a letter from me to you but also from you to me–because from where I’m standing, with all the nuances and ephemera surrounding you and I, it feels like we're all in this situation together. You kind of made that happen. Thank you. I’m such a huge fan. 

Chanelle, you asked me about the flags and what I thought their poles looked like. Or how they seemed. I feel like your questions never really ask for answers but act more as an invitation to get amongst it, better to feel it out or something. Whereas Joe, you seem better equipped to know how they seem already. You’ve thought about the poles from every angle, from both sides. The fact I’m even here, positioned in between you, feels purposefully positioned– like your response to the social engagement of your work, its drive through process, acts as a reminder that we’re together in something very much alive. Youre definitely making that happen.

I like that everything you do triggers my urge to reach out to you both–with my hands. Maybe because I’m drawn to your hands. There they are, all four of them, kneading the air in front of each other's faces in storytelling and testimony. Joe, your hands work hard exhuming the mass in your mind –I don't know if I should genuflect or just stay standing–when you play, watching your world croon from one hand, things feel loud. Little hand written notes hanging above your head when you're explaining catharsis to me. Chanelle, your hands are ushering the matter from your chest; tending, weaving, printing. The things you make, realising the unlimited ways you handle your busy mind, raucous feelings, in the flow of action. It’s pure resistance.  

Both sets of hands are ubiquitous with the involvement of your affairs. A go-between for relating all the stuffs from your insides to others: ambient sounds, conversations, experimental compositions and improvised instrumental response, are you recording me right now? 

How to hold things (this, that, me, you) is something you both do so well: there’s space for each other and anyone else who comes close–acting as respite from love and death and everything else that reverberates through us on loop–allowing hard things to fall softly, melodically. People disown dangerous feelings, Chanelle seams them together, while Joe, you keep it all filed, collected, here. In this room. On that tape. 

To say farewell feels right but you’ve always been here, there, everywhere. It’s a high bye. 

I’m such a huge fan and I really never want it to end. Play Something Else Cowboy. Please. 

Love from, Emma