MARTIN J TICKNER
CREATIVE / ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

This new musical venture comes in the form of

'SO COOL', a conceptual Post Pop album, a body of audio travelogues inspired by / and steeped in / his unique life experience that includes;

working in a record shop 1962/’68, witnessing the un-signed Rolling Stones play Alexis Korner’s blues club, his flat-mates The Pink Floyd rehearsals at home, turning on his close friend Marc Bolan to Do-Wop, watching the Sex-Pistols second gig, and Spandau Ballet's first, while immersed in '60s Avant Garde Jazz, Opera and Classical, early Motown, Stax and Soul. From playing with tape-recorders and answer-machines as a teen to creating cassette collages on his boom box, he made his first track "The Big Riddle," in the 90s with Howie B and second 'Sometimes' with Arthur Baker. 

 

While still working on film and painting he made many self produced audio pieces encouraged by his friend French pop icon Etienne Daho, these experiments developed into the body of work that is his first album - SO COOL. The completed album features Etienne Daho’s vocals on two tracks and also a duet with legendary singer and muse Marianne Faithfull on the song ‘Stars In My Eyes’

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History
Fields was born in Tidworth, Wiltshire. Briefly studying architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic, he continued his studies at Chelsea School of Art from 1964 - 1968. It was during this time his creative practice shifted from following minimal, conceptual and constructivist art movements to display a more hard-edge Post-Pop painting figuration. From the 1970s onwards, his works began displaying characteristics now associated with Postmodern art.

 

In 1983 Fields was invited by the Shiseido Corporation to Tokyo, where a gallery was created to show his paintings. To mark this exhibition, he and his works were simultaneously featured in a television, magazine, billboard and subway advertising campaign throughout Japan. In the mid-90's expanding into the digital with audio and animation, he evolved a personal form of MAXIMAlism, defining it as MINIMALism with a plus, plus, plus.

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Fields has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, with notable solo shows being held at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (1980), Shiseido Contemporary, Tokyo (1983), Rempire, New York (1991) and Galleri Gi Ljere, Denmark (2008). His works are also held in public collections including the Arts Council and University College London. In 2016, he was celebrated by the British Film Institute FLARE with a presentation of a collection of his video collage sound work.

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In 2017 his Portrait of Syd Barrett hung for 6 months in the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of their Pink Floyd Exhibition, before going on to the Macro in Rome where it is on show now. Currently he is part of the Haywood Gallery Touring 'Shonky' Exhibition at the DCA in Dundee and showing in the 'Creative Rage' Exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on- Trent, from Apr.28th - Sept.2nd'

For Glasgow International 2018, the Modern Institute Glasgow will present an exhibition of his works from 20th April - 26" May, based around a gallery installation of his home studio, with paintings, video and music pieces.

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Duggie Fields sadly passed 7 March 2021