EOIN SHEA - an online archive of works

Corridor8 magazine issue 3 frontispeace 2

2012-02-11T05:11:00.000-08:00

Paper collage illustration to be published in the forthcoming four-part third issue of Corridor8 magazine.

Corridor8 magazine issue 3 frontispiece

2011-11-17T12:32:00.001-08:00

Paper collage illustration to be published in the forthcoming four-part third issue of Corridor8 magazine, the first part entitled Space Frontiers. The first part will be launched at the Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle on the 8th December.

GHOSTS A Tribute to Albert Ayler, video excerpt

2011-11-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

Short excerpt from the recent show GHOSTS A Tribute to Albert Ayler. Full documentation to be made available in the very near future on its own dedicated website.

Same video also available here.

GHOSTS A Tribute to Albert Ayler - Paul Hession & Leon Johnson, Eoin Shea & Derek Horton; October 7 2011; Holy Trinity Church, Leeds, UK

2011-11-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

Documentation of GHOSTS A Tribute to Albert Ayler, the first performance of a collaborative project between Paul Hession (drums), Leon Johnson (sax), Eoin Shea (video) and Derek Horton (video). Typography used in videos designed by Andrew Wilson Lambeth and New York location footage shot by Les Joynes. Full video documentation to follow.

GHOSTS / A Tribute to Albert Ayler / Paul Hession & Leon Johnson, Eoin Shea & Derek Horton / October 7 2011 / Leeds, UK

2011-09-07T17:43:00.001-07:00

PAUL HESSION + DEREK HORTON + LEON THOMAS JOHNSON + EOIN SHEA

7 October 2011 – from 7pm - at Holy Trinity Church, Boar Lane, Leeds, UK

GHOSTS, a tribute to Albert Ayler

Ghosts is a collaborative work by the artists Derek Horton and Eoin Shea, and the musicians Paul Hession (percussion) and Leon Thomas Johnson (tenor saxophone). Hession and Johnson improvise to two twin-screen film projections by Horton and Shea. The project is a tribute to the legendary musician Albert Ayler, 41 years after his death in New York at the age of 34. After falling from the Staten Island ferry in mysterious circumstances, Ayler's body was found on 25 November 1970.

Ghosts has its origins in an earlier collaboration between Derek Horton and Leon Johnson several years ago: an animated sequence of Horton’s photographs of three significant locations in New York - Sonny Rollins' practice spot on the Williamsburg Bridge, 48 East 3rd where Sun Ra and his Arkestra lived, and Congress Street Pier, where Albert Ayler's body was washed up after he drowned in the East River. This was sound-tracked with a recording of a Johnson saxophone improvisation multi-tracked in post-production by Horton. This work can still be seen at http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/001/002/articles/dhortonljohnson/index.php

For the current project, Eoin Shea has re-worked the original footage in one film, and also made an entirely new film, in collaboration with Horton and in response to recordings of Albert Ayler’s music. This utilises video footage shot for the project in the vicinity of Congress Street Pier by New York-based artist Les Joynes, together with especially commissioned typography by Andrew Wilson Lambeth. The resulting twin-screen black-and-white projection is focused on textural and rhythmic image qualities and will provide the starting-point as well as the backdrop for Hession and Johnson’s improvisation.

Ghosts is the second collaborative production between Eoin Shea and Derek Horton. The first, The Man Who Saved The World, took place in the abandoned shell of a former shopping space in Leeds city centre on 23 Sept 2010. Within 22,000 square feet of reclaimed space, Home of the Brave sound-tracked Shea's ten screen circular cinema of re-cut science fiction imagery with free jazz inflected renditions of classic western film tunes. Documentation can be seen at http://www.themanwhosavedtheworld.co.uk/ and http://vimeo.com/19129342

The first performance of Ghosts will take place in the landmark 18th century Holy Trinity Church in Leeds city centre on Friday 7th October from 7pm. It is a self-funded project and attendance is free. Subsequent touring dates are planned and should be announced shortly.     

  Paul Hession, born in Leeds, is one of the major free-jazz drummers in the world. He took up the drums in his teens and has played in many European & Scandinavian countries as well as Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, USA and Canada, performing with many world-renowned improvising musicians including Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Sunny Murray, Marshall Allen, Frode Gjerstad, Peter Kowald, Joe McPhee and Borah Bergman. Other collaborators include Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher), Otomo Yoshihide, Alan Wilkinson, Simon Fell, Mick Beck & Hans-Peter Hiby and Paul Woolford.

Leon Thomas Johnson is a member of The Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra, a Leeds-based afro-beat band influenced by Fela Kuti and others. In 2009 the band were signed to independent record label First Word Records and released their self-titled debut album in 2010. As an improviser Leon has worked with Paul Dunmall and others, and regularly with Paul Hession in their duo Gunboat Diplomacy.

Derek Horton is an artist, writer and teacher. After working in community arts, adventure playgrounds and alternative education in the 1970’s, he spent many years as a university-based art school academic. He now works independently on art projects, writing and publishiing, including the online magazine Soanyway.

Eoin Shea is an artist working with film, video, painting, collage and installation, often collaborating with musicians to produce large-scale live events. These include work with Vibracathedral Orchestra co-founder Michael Flower, Richard Ormrod's Home of the Brave, The Telescopes, and Ashtray Navigations, making film and video for live improvised sound-tracking and working with the textural and sensorial impact of film in a live performance environment.   

Albert Ayler -  playing with a wild, atonal sound in his hometown of Cleveland in the 1950s, an era in which a good deal of jazz was getting quieter and smoother, the other-worldly Ayler focussed obsessively on a contemporary vision of the long-gone ragged polyphonies, street-marches, gospel songs and spirituals of the earliest African-American music.   He once said of his music: "If people don't like it now, they will." He didn't live to see that happen, but history was on his side. The Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek was a devoted Ayler disciple in the late-1960s, as was Coltrane acolyte and subsequent acid-jazz star, Pharoah Sanders. The unique British improv original Evan Parker still has Ayler inflections, and even Sonny Rollins and the late Michael Brecker, despite greater acceptance in a more conventional contemporary jazz world, appreciated the intensity of Ayler's extraordinary sound.

Syrian Rue - Eoin Shea & Michael Flower, 2008

2011-07-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from the now out of print four part DVD-R collaboration between Eoin Shea and Michael Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra, Flower Corsano Duo etc).

45 minutes of manual and digital alterations to the found home movies of some anonymous English family.

RUNNERS - Starting Line music video

2011-07-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

Official video for the first RUNNERS single 'Starting Line', to be released by DUMMY on July 18 2011 on 12" vinyl.

Runners - Starting Line music video preview

2011-06-11T06:06:00.000-07:00

Music video currently in the editing stages for Runners first single 'Starting Line'. Listen to the track here

http://www.themanwhosavedtheworld.co.uk Finally Online

2011-03-26T05:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.themanwhosavedtheworld.co.uk is now online.

Review of The Plaza Principle show

2011-02-19T11:37:00.000-08:00

A review of The Plaza Principle by Millpond, and an accompanying article by Bruce Davies.

Documentation of The Man Who Saved The World

2011-01-24T10:06:00.000-08:00

The Man Who Saved The World - Eoin Shea & Home of the Brave; 23 September 2010; Leeds, UK from Eoin Shea on Vimeo.

Untitled collage, 2011

2011-01-05T08:18:00.000-08:00

The Man Who Saved The World mentioned in this months Wire magazine

2011-01-03T05:03:00.001-08:00

The Man Who Saved The World was mentioned in this months edition of The Wire:

While Leeds' recent high profile commissions] are worthy they appear to be weighed down by their civic duty, and are vulnerable to cuts in the current economic climate. In contrast, one cannot underestimate the importance of self-funded events such as The Man Who Saved The World, a daring film/gig event featuring Home of the Brave, a Morricone-inspired jazz Improv outfit featuring Joost Hendrixx (drums), Seth Bennett (bass), Richard Ormrod (sax) and Jonny Flockton (guitar). The project finds the group placed at the centre of a vast vacated TK Maxx store, surrounded by a ten-screen recombination of a film dubbed The Turkish Star Wars, chopped up and re-presented by Eoin Shea. The original material itself is a bizarre mash-up of men with tinfoil swords running around a desert intercut with stolen frames from Star Wars, the perfect backdrop for the Spaghetti Western surrealism of Home of the Brave.

Thank you to Bruce Davies.

The Man Who Saved The World - The old TK Maxx shopping space, 23rd September, Leeds

2010-12-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

Documentation of The Man Who Saved The World, a one night project curated by Eoin Shea and featuring Home of the Brave accompanying ten screens of video. Supporting book We're all astronauts, always have been.... written by Derek Horton.

Full website in development and available here.

All photography is copyright Kate Broughton.

The Man Who Saved The World - The old TK Maxx shopping space, 23rd Spetember, Leeds

2010-09-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Man Who Saved The World is a one night event curated by Eoin Shea. Home of the Brave will be performing their free-jazz infected renditions of the classic western theme tunes to a ten screen circular cinema of geometrically edited versions of Dunyari Kurtaran Adam (known also as Turkish Star Wars for the directors shameless use of scenes from Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope in place of otherwise unaffordable original special effects). Derek Horton has written a specially commissioned text, We're all astronauts, always have been..., which will be available on the night in a hand-bound edition of 100.

The event will take place in the 22,000 sq foot abandoned shell of the former TK Maxx shopping space in Leeds city centre.

DISCHARGE exhibition at Lumen project space, Leeds, 2010

2010-03-08T03:59:00.000-08:00

Full documentation available here.

Look Up, Hannah!!!, 2009 (stills)

2010-03-06T09:53:00.001-08:00

DISCHARGE Exhibition, Lumen Project Space, Leeds. 3rd and 5th March

2010-02-11T14:58:00.001-08:00

Various Inflammatory Conditions // Significant Collisions, published in SlashSeconds issue 10

2009-11-07T15:55:00.000-08:00

Various Inflammatory Conditions // Significant Collisions. Published in Slashseconds issue 10.

The New Obsolete exhibition at Artwars, London, 2009

2009-10-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

Information from Slashseconds.org

Review

Syrian Rue, 2008 (stills)

2009-10-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Thmei Research, 2009

2009-10-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

It's A Bad Kind Of Memory That Only Works Backwards, 2009

2009-05-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

Like Music But Boring - friday 8th august at the commonplace leeds

2008-07-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

Like Music But Boring is an evening of 'sound art' currated by Laurence
Moxon Byrne. A screening of Untitled (silversluceandsmog) will accompany this night with the possibility of selected sections from Syrian Rue. These will be 'closed' showings by which I mean the audio will be the prerecorded audio and not a live performance.

Here is the full lineup:

Sound art performances from:

Jez riley French (Hull) - field recordings/intuitive music
http://www.myspace.com/jezrileyfrench

These Mountains (Leeds) - minimal guitar/field recordings
http://www.myspace.com/thesemountains

Tillykke Kattemor (Hebden Bridge) - no-input jams
http://www.myspace.com/tillykkekattemor

Edmund Cook (London) - hi-hat circles
http://edmundcook.blogspot.com/

Eoin Shea (Leeds) - 'mind-melting' visuals
http://eoinshea.blogspot.com/

Untitled (silversluceandsmog)

2008-07-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

Clip from latest film piece, Silversluceandsmog. The film features music by Ashtray Navigations kindly supplied by Phil Todd and comes from an old album called Four More Ragga Moods. Available on 3" DVD soon. Contact for a copy.

Four Mourners (Tattered Robes and Dead Landscapes)

2008-06-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

Syrian Rue screened at 20th annual Termite Club Festival, Leeds

2008-05-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

Syrian Rue screened in full at the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds, UK as part of the 20th annual Termite Club Festival on the 19th May. Thankyou to Mel and all who managed to attend and anyone who gave me kind words afterwards.

Sun Child - extract from Eoin Shea / Michael Flower collaboration

2008-03-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Extract from collaborative work between myself and Michael Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra, Flower/Corsana, United Light etc). Available on the Syrian Rue DVD project.

The film is made from a manually manipulated found super8 film loop with extra digital compositing and overlays.

Michael Flower performing with John Moloney of Sunburned Hand of the Man fame. Ecstatic Peace also have some gig footage which is viewable here.

Syrian Rue - films by Eoin Shea with music by Michael Flower DVD

2008-03-17T16:36:00.001-07:00

Brand new self released DVD-R project with Michael Flower (of Vibracathedral Orchestra, Flower/Corsana Duo, United Light, occasional Sunburned Hand of the Man etc):

Limited self-released DVD that bundles the hallucinatory full-colour experimental short films of UK avantist Eoin Shea (in a style that combines psychedelically altered 'found' footage and 1970s/80s home movies with over the top technicolour visual fluctuations ala Kenneth Anger’s Magik Lantern Cycle) with unreleased music by Michael Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra. The sonics here are drawn from what would have been Flower’s first solo album, with long tracks of warped electric strings extended into aggressively amplified ragas. An inspired collaboration.
Volcanic Tongue

Available online now at Volcanic Tongue and various US distributors soon enough.

Phase Kenosis on Another Whip / The Blue Shrowd of Alcatraz by the Telescopes

2008-03-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

First official release on Trensmat with the Telescopes who are Stephen Lawrie and Bridget Hayden. They kindly released a film I made for them with an accompanying unreleased live set they did in the States a while back. Wrap around cover artwork by Lauren Naylor.