The practice of Newcastle-based artist Matt Stokes stems from a long-term enquiry into music subcultures. Hardcore, grindcore and death metal music genres are foregrounded in the 2010 large-scale film installation Cantata Profana, a choral presentation created collaboratively with leading composer Orlando Gough. Stokes has exhibited widely throughout the United Kingdom and internationally including at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in the UK, Witte de With in The Netherlands, and New York's PS1 gallery in the States.
Stokes was born in Penzance, Cornwall and gained his BA Fine Art from Newcastle University. The artist refers to the shared music legacies of this city, where he continues to live and work, and London's Camden in The Gainsborough Packet (2009-9), a short 16-mm video work combining a music video format with the visual language of a costume period drama. Shown more or less simultaneously at BALTIC in Gateshead and the 176 Project Space in London in 2009 the piece documents a time during the Industrial Revolution showcasing the impact of music upon the population. The work Long After Tonight (2005), for which Stokes won the Beck's Future art award, takes as its subject the 1960s British music and dance movement Northern Soul, recreating a night staged at St Salvador's Church in Dundee, Scotland. Stokes mediates time and speed in this award-winning film, and through the involvement of original participants in the scene and careful depiction of the Gothic interior, he combines a sense of nostalgia with that of shared religious experience.
Stokes is interested in the way that music acts as a catalyst for groups to form, shaping and influencing people's lives and identities. His heavily research-based practice often involves his absorption into a specific setting, or area of interest, through which collaborations with informal communities arise. He works across mediums including film, installation and the event and has a broad experience in working on complex collaborative and participatory projects.
Residencies and awards
2010
Visual Artist of the Year, Journal Culture Awards
2006
Beck's Futures prize awarded by Beck's and the ICA, London
2003
RSA Art for Architecture, awarded by the Royal Society of Arts
2002
Grizedale Arts residency
Kielder Water and Forest Park residency
Selected solo exhibitions
2011
[De Hallen]http://www.dehallenhaarlem.nl/tentoonstellingen/verwacht/?language=en), Haarlem, NL
2010
Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, DE
Works | Projects, Bristol, UK
Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam, NL
2009
Zabludowicz Collection (formerly Project Space 176), London, UK
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art,Newcastle, UK
Arthouse, Austin, US
2008
Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin, DE
2007
VOID Gallery, Derry, UK
Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, US
attitudes - espace d'arts contemporain, Geneva, CH
Selected works
2010
Cantata Profana
2007
Real Arcadia
2006
Long After Tonight
socialspaces, organised in association with the BBC2 series by Simon Schama, The Power of Art, and funded by Arts Council England
Sacred Selections, commissioned by Locus+, Newcastle, UK
2001
Stretch, video installation commissioned by Sunderland Arts, UK
Allotment, residency with pigeon fanciers at allotments in Wallsend, UK
2000
Roll-in' Along, video intervention commissioned by Work & Leisure International, Manchester, UK
