Singing Skies evolved from cooperation between musician Stuart A. Staples – lead singer and guitarist of the band Tindersticks – and painter Suzanne Osborne.
The exhibition in Künstlerhaus Bethanien is based on the two artists’ original idea to bring together, in a book, works from Osborne’s series of paintings A year in small paintings – Skies, September 2010 – September 2011 and song texts composed by Staples. It collects together all the original works and materials in the exhibition space.
Osborne’s series of paintings developed from her endeavours to create an ongoing routine of work after a break in creative production. She had the idea of documenting the sky continually in the form of a small-format oil painting once a day, produced as far as possible at the same time of day. The paintings of the series were made predominantly in the French Limousin region where Osborne lives, but also on her travels to Istanbul, Portugal and various places in England. The result provides great variety with respect to coloration, content and form, which became the important element of the series. In turn, musician Stuart A. Staples wrote down some of his text compositions for the first time for the project.
In Künstlerhaus Bethanien it will also be possible to see a collection of hand-crafted carborundum prints by Suzanne Osborne and master printer Tom Phelan (10 bookspreads with painting and text), a short film-documentation of their development by filmmaker Martin Wallace, and a video installation by filmmaker Claire Denis with the paintings and an original Tindersticks score.