UNE Art Gallery Exhibit celebrates landmark graphic score starting July 10
The University of New England Art Gallery in Portland will present “Arrows & Operators: Visual Debates in Music,” a new exhibition exploring the intersection of visual art and experimental music, opening at the Gallery on UNE's Portland Campus for the Health Sciences.
The exhibit, which opens July 10 in tandem with a live performance of selections from Cornelius Cardew’s landmark graphic score, “Treatise,” uniquely juxtaposes the score with works by contemporary artists, taking an innovative approach to highlighting the phenomenon of visual information.
UNE’s presentation is the first to reimagine Cardew's score as “a total spatial environment through a series of murals in the gallery,” said UNE Director of Galleries and Exhibitions Hilary Irons.
Those murals will be used as a score during the live concert that will take place on July 10 at the exhibit’s opening reception, a performance Irons calls “an important and rare performance of a crucial piece of modern experimental musical score," which was composed between 1963 and 1967.
“This show is exciting in the context of UNE, as it plumbs the meanings around visual information systems and the diversity of thought that goes into the process of envisioning information,” said Irons about the exhibit that was co-curated by John Fireman and Akiva Zamcheck.
“Across many disciplines in the sciences and humanities, visual information systems are a dynamic and ever-changing form of communication,” Irons added. “Caredew's work, and that of the contemporary artists in ‘Arrows & Operators,’ exemplifies the creativity that goes into graphic mechanisms.”
The upcoming performance, which features musicians from New York City, Baltimore, and Maine, may well be one of the few performances of “Treatise” ever performed in Maine, Irons said. In addition, the concert marks the first time a live performance will be part of a UNE Art Gallery exhibit opening.
Participating artists are CF, Phillip Greenlief, Frank Mauceri, and Lauren Tosswill. The musicians performing selections from “Treatise” include Greenlief, Mauceri, Jeremy Brogan, Sigrid Harmon, Tessa Irons, Bonnie Han Jones, and Cleek Schrey.
The exhibit also speaks to an innovative time in musical history that began 75 years ago. In the 1950s, composers in search of new sounds began to experiment with alternative ways of visualizing sonic thought, explained Fireman.
“‘Treatise’ functions here as both a visual and conceptual anchor, opening up larger questions of how information is imagined, structured, and shared, when seeking to describe what lies beyond the constraints of language,” Fireman said.
The reception and concert will be held on Friday, July 10, from 5 to 7 p.m. It is free and open to the public. The gallery is otherwise open Thursday to Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment.
Those who attend may park in the UNE back parking lot beside the museum, located on UNE’s Portland Campus for the Health Sciences at 716 Stevens Ave.