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Bomberg: Motion & Music

  • Borough Road Gallery 103 Borough Road London, England, SE1 0AA United Kingdom (map)
Oscar Lewis Bomberg Portrait

Bomberg: Motion & Music is an immersive performance combining music and animated imagery inspired by David Bomberg. Artist, Oscar Lewis, has produced a series of animations in response to the distinct phases in Bomberg’s career. Working in collaboration with chamber musicians, Three Parts Vied, the performance will highlight Bomberg's creativity and influence on future generations of artists. 

The performance takes music from seventeenth-century England and relates it to the life and work of David Bomberg. This isn't to create a one-to-one correspondence, but rather to offer some connections and points of artistic common ground between musicians and painters separated by some three hundred years.

Across the three sets Three Parts Vied loosely trace the progression of David Bomberg's artistic life. We begin in his Vorticist period, characterised by a questioning of what representational art could achieve. For this, we draw on the extreme harmonic languages of John Danyel and Tobias Hume, as well as introducing the composer Matthew Locke. He runs through our programme, a sort of double for Bomberg.

In the middle set the musicians will explore a more pastoral vein, as Bomberg did in his time in Palestine, turning back towards more straightforwardly representational material. Musically, we hark back to William Corynsh's Ah Robin, as well as encountering Henry Purcell and his Fairest Isle.

In the final set London in its longstanding role as a social and creative hub for artists becomes the focus. The composers here - Henry Purcell, Giovanni Batista Draghi, Matthew Locke - variously taught, learnt and worked together. This connected musical life evokes the interconnections of the Borough Group, and the power of working in creative, collaborative circumstances.

New work by Oscar Lewis and a performance by Three Parts Vied.

Earlier Event: November 25
An Elephant Walk with Isobel Durrant