Stephen Cornford (born
1979, London) is an installation artist and improvising musician.
His work stems
from an abiding fascination with consumer audio electronics: the way
these devices that we are sold to consume music increasingly frame
our engagement with the auditory world at large. Reconfiguring these
media from the inside, re-imagining their functionality, defying
their obsolescence and searching for their intrinsic poetry are for
him strategies with which to challenge normative use, social
conformity and the myth of technological progress. His work inhabits
both gallery and gig, taking the forms of kinetic installation and
process-based performance by turns, always searching for situations
in which the material; whether solid, spatial or sonic; controls the
outcome as much as he does.
Stephen is currently a Research
Fellow at the Sound Art Research Unit of Oxford Brookes University
where he co-curates the Audiograft Festival. He initially studied
sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art before completing an MA at
Dartington College of Arts. He has established ongoing collaborations
with Samuel Rodgers (with whom he runs the Consumer Waste label), Ben
Gwilliam and Patrick Farmer.
Recent exhibitions include solo
shows at Lydgalleriet (Bergen), Campbell Works (London) and Permanent
Gallery (Brighton). Stephen’s work has been included in a large
scale retrospectives namely: Sound Art at ZKM Centre for Media
& Art and Urban Sounds at the Haus der Elektronische
Künste in Basel. Stephen’s audio works have been published by
Senufo Editions, Accidie Records, Another Timbre and Cathnor.
http://www.scrawn.co.uk/
http://www.scrawn.co.uk/
