tom hackett sculpture

'a song for.....'   a public performance series developed in collaboration with Julian Woodock

A song for Luton                           

Location: Outside Storefront Gallery 

Bute Street Luton. 12/11/2018 1pm

Standing shoulder to shoulder outside the Storefront Gallery, Tom Hackett and Julian Woodcock wore hard hats and took it in turns to recite the artist names and titles of pop songs connected with regrets and hope, for 45 minutes. The ethos of the intervention  was to playfully balance the curious with the poignant, connecting to the exhibition 'a barbecue of regrets' and Luton itself in a tangential way.  This include references to the hat industry, the airport and car and van manufacture. It aimed to have the feel of a retro style public information broadcast. 

Photographs and video by Paul Davey

Curated by Matthew Shaul

A song for Derby

Performative walk between Derby Theatre and Deda part of indialogue symposium 19/11/2019 5.30pm

A song for Derby was a performative intervention in the public domain occurring as an interactive walk between Derby Theatre and DEDA. Hackett and Woodcock led  the symposium delegates across the city centre from one venue to another. Using a call and response interactive format with participants, they recited the artist name and titles of various pop songs. These songs connected with themes of Language, Dialogue and with Derby as a place (both in a literal and tangential sense). These included references to the aircraft, railway and silk industry. The intervention aimed to balance the curious with the poignant along with a splash of absurdist humour. It encoded the sense of a quasi-functional activity akin to a political demo.

Photographs by Rhiannon Jones