Marion Coutts

Last updated

Marion Coutts
Born1965 (age 58–59)
Nigeria
NationalityBritish
Known forFilm, video, sculpture, installation, books
Notable workThe Iceberg: A Memoir
SpouseTom Lubbock
Musical career
Genres Post-punk
Instrument(s)Vocals, trumpet, percussion
Years active1986–1995
LabelsDemon Radge, Konkurrel, Alternative Tentacles
Website marioncoutts.com

Marion Coutts (born 1965) is a British sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, author, and musician, known for her work as an installation artist and her decade as frontwoman for the band Dog Faced Hermans. [1] In 2014 she published her critically acclaimed memoir, The Iceberg. [2]

Contents

Early life

Marion Coutts was born in Nigeria and raised in the United Kingdom. Her parents were Salvation Army ministers with whom she traveled extensively. [3] The church they attended had a strong musical tradition that encouraged young girls to play brass instruments, [4] and at age 10 Coutts started playing trumpet for a large Salvation Army band. [5]

Coutts' family lived in London and then Scotland where she stayed on to attend college, earning her BA in Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art from 1982 to 1986. [3]

Music

While attending college, Coutts joined an improvisational musical project called Volunteer Slavery. Named after an album by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the group consisted of three men and three women who "mostly banged on things," [5] including guitars, oil drums, and other percussion. Coutts played trumpet and another woman played sax, and their first gig was a benefit in support of the UK miners' strike. The group persisted for a year-and-a-half without writing any formal songs, though a demo tape was recorded and has resurfaced on the internet. [6]

Dog Faced Hermans

In 1986 three members of Volunteer Slavery wanted to continue on as a more serious band, and Coutts expressed interest in being their vocalist. They named themselves Dog Faced Hermans, after an obscure reference in a Frankenstein film, and began paring down their music into shorter, faster songs that still maintained some of Volunteer Slavery's experimental elements. [5] In addition to writing and singing lyrics, Coutts played cowbell and added her trumpet, giving the group a distinctive sound. [3]

The Dog Faced Hermans toured the UK and released a few records until moving to Amsterdam in 1989. During this period, Coutts spent a year in Poland on a British Council Scholarship to attend the State School for the Arts in Wroclaw Poland. In 1990 she rejoined her band in the Netherlands, and the group went on to release four more albums. They toured Europe and North America before disbanding in 1995 with various members scattering into new projects around the globe. Coutts returned to the UK to concentrate on her art. [7]

Other appearances

Coutts has also recorded on releases with Dutch musical groups The Ex, [8] Instant Composers Pool, [8] and Dull Schicksal; [9] with British groups Spaceheads [10] and the Honkies; [11] with American group God is My Co-Pilot on their 1994 Peel Session, [12] and with cellist Tom Cora. [13] After a musical hiatus, she recorded on a couple of compilation tracks, but no musical output has been heard from her since 1998. [1]

Visual art

Coutts is known for her non-linear film and video style, often juxtaposed with sculpture to create immersive installations, sometimes with elements that invite viewers to participate in the work. For 1999's Fresh Air, she built a set of three irregularly shaped ping-pong tables, which replicated maps of London's Battersea, Regent's, and Hyde Park, each bisected by a table tennis net. [14] That same year Eclipse took a small garden greenhouse which was periodically filled with artificial fog, fittingly at London's Gasworks Gallery. [15] 2000's Assembly superimposed film of flocking starlings onto a wooden lectern. [16] In 2001's Decalogue, Coutts emblazoned a set of tenpins with each of the Ten Commandments. [14]

2002's Cult beckoned onlookers to squeeze between a configuration of rectangular columns and peer into the eyes of a black cat looped in semi-stillness on nine video monitors. Artforum said that, "Cult evokes prehistoric standing stone circles as well as hieratic Egyptian cat sculpture-in ancient Egypt, the cat goddess Bastet was the patroness of family happiness." [16] First installed at London's Chisendale Gallery, the gallery describes the work:

The viewer first experiences the group from a distance, the monitor screens providing the only source of light. Moving onto the platform and amongst the screens, visitors are made aware that each cat is moving, but barely perceptibly. From any position, only two or three of the cats' faces are visible. Each cat goes through a cycle of opening and closing their eyes, of waking and sleeping and each cycle remains dogmatically out of sync with its neighbours. [17]

Coutts has enlisted Ex-Dog Faced Hermans guitarist Andy Moor to score many of her short films. Shot on super-8, her 2000 film Epic follows the adventures of a life-sized model horse as it's ceremonially carried through the city of Rome. [18] 2002's No Evil Star, named for the second half of a well-known palindrome, shows closeups of live mealworms colonizing a clay city. [19] Moor also scored Twenty Six Things, [20] a film that Coutts comprised from artifacts collected by Henry Wellcome that she herself was never permitted to touch. [21]

Personal life and teaching

In 1996 Coutts completed the London Arts Board/Institute of Education "Artists in Schools" Training Programme and received a City and Guilds Further and Adult Education Teacher's Certificate in 1997. From 1996 to 1999 she worked as a fine arts tutor and taught courses in portfolio preparation, after which she lived in Rome on a scholarship. [22] In 2001 she undertook a MOMART Fellowship at Tate Liverpool, followed by a Kettle's Yard Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge in 2003. [23]

In 1997 Coutts began a relationship with fellow artist Tom Lubbock who wrote for the arts section for the British newspaper The Independent. The two married in 2001 and lived in separate flats in the north and south of London. [3] When their son Eugene was born in 2007, they settled in Brixton. [24]

In 2001 Coutts began tutoring and guest teaching at Goldsmiths University, taking up a permanent position there in 2007. Concurrently, she was a visiting tutor for the Sculpture, City and Guilds of London Art School in 2002 and 2003, a visiting lecturer and then research fellow at the Norwich School of Art and Design on and off from 2004 to 2009, and an associate lecturer at University of the Arts, London from 2005 to 2010. [22]

In 2008, her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor that turned out to be glioblastoma multiforme. Told that he would have about two years to live, they moved into a hospice in 2010. [21] He died of the cancer in 2011. [3]

Writing

Before Lubbock's illness, Coutts regarded herself purely as a visual artist and not a writer. Feeling unable to create anything while her husband underwent treatment, she turned to writing. [21] In 2009 after Lubbock's first brain surgery and rounds of chemotherapy, Coutts began to jot things down in a series of Word docs. Initially these fragments, or "little lenses" as Coutts calls them, were a reflexive practice, which she eventually joined into a chains of texts and realized as a larger work. [21]

In 2012 Coutts contributed the introduction to her husband's posthumously released memoir, Until Further Notice, I Am Alive. That same year she edited Lubbock's essay collection, The English Graphic. [25]

In 2014 Coutts published the book The Iceberg, a "poetic and searing memoir" about her husband's death. [26] The memoir begins at the point of Lubbock's 2008 diagnosis and follows him, Coutts, and their son Eugene (called "Ev" in the book) up through his treatment and eventual death in 2011. [21] The Los Angeles Times praised the book, saying, "'The plot of The Iceberg can be summed up in a sentence: A man gets sick and dies. Indeed, little else happens in artist turned author Marion Coutts' account of the final two years of her husband's life. Yet it is dazzling, devastating." [27] The Iceberg was shortlisted for several literary prizes, and Coutts was awarded the Wellcome Book Prize in 2015. [28]

Works

Discography

Albums with Dog Faced Hermans:

Sculpture and installation

Film and video

Books

Exhibitions

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfgang Tillmans</span> German photographer (born 1968)

Wolfgang Tillmans is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations.

Bernd Behr is a Taiwanese artist based in London.

Layla Rosalind Nashashibi is a Palestinian-English artist based in London. Nashashibi works mainly with 16 mm film but also makes paintings and prints. Her work often deals with everyday observations merged with mythological elements, considering the relationships and moments between community and extended family.

Nick Crowe is an English artist from Yorkshire. He works in a range of raw materials and live comic situations; some of his earlier work is internet-based. He is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London. Crowe lives in Berlin and works in London and Manchester. You can also find Crowe live streaming on Twitch as he documents his artistic progress in his rustic Berlin countryside barn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Thomson (artist)</span> English artist, poet and photographer

Charles Thomson is an English artist, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art gallery, stood for parliament and reported Charles Saatchi to the OFT. He is frequently quoted in the media as an opponent of conceptual art. He was briefly married to artist Stella Vine.

Dog Faced Hermans were a post-punk band that formed in Scotland in the mid 1980s and remained active through the mid 1990s. They emerged from the UK anarcho-punk scene with a guitar/bass/drums line-up, but also incorporated trumpet and other instruments not commonly found in punk music at that time. Their composition style incorporated many genres of music outside of rock, including folk, jazz, ambient and noise music with often unorthodox instrumentation.

Alice Rawsthorn OBE is a British design critic and author. Her books include Design as an Attitude (2018) and Hello World: Where Design Meets Life (2013). She is chair of the board of trustees at the Chisenhale Gallery in London and at The Hepworth Wakefield gallery in Yorkshire. Rawsthorn is a founding member of Writers at Liberty, a group of writers who are committed to supporting the work of the human rights charity Liberty. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to design and the arts.

Maureen Paley is the American owner of a contemporary art gallery in Bethnal Green, London, where she lives. It was founded in 1984, called Interim Art during the 1990s, and renamed Maureen Paley in 2004. She exhibited Young British Artists at an early stage. Artists represented include Turner Prize winners Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Gillian Wearing and Wolfgang Tillmans. One thing in common with many of the artists represented is their interest in addressing social issues.

David Burrows is a British artist and writer. His work consists of drawings and paint-spattered, debris-littered, haphazard installations. He writes articles on art and aesthetics and was the editor of Article Press when based at Birmingham City University. He is currently a Reader in Fine Art at Slade School of Fine Art, where his research interests include the depictions of events and aftermaths, utopian narratives and indexical art practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sigalit Landau</span> Israeli sculptor, video and installation artist

Sigalit Landau is an Israeli sculptor, video and installation artist.

Jemima Stehli is a British feminist artist, who is especially known for her naked self-portrait photographs. Stehli lives and works in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Moor (guitarist)</span> Musical artist

Andy Moor is an English guitarist best known for his work with Dog Faced Hermans and the Ex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lubaina Himid</span> British artist and curator (born 1954)

Lubaina Himid is a British artist and curator. She is a professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire. Her art focuses on themes of cultural history and reclaiming identities.

<i>Treat</i> (album) 1990 studio album (split) by The Ex and Dog Faced Hermans

Treat is a split cassette shared between by Dutch punk band The Ex and Scottish ex-pat tour mates Dog Faced Hermans. The album was recorded live while the two bands toured Europe together and was released only on cassette in 1990. That year the two bands also collaborated on the single "Lied der Steinklopfer" released under the name Ex Faced Hermans, as well as sharing live sound engineer Gert-Jan, credited as a full member of the Dog Faced Hermans who continued to tour with The Ex for more than a decade.

Katerina Athanasopoulou is a Greek film maker and animation artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chisenhale Gallery</span> Non profit art gallery in London

Chisenhale Gallery is a non-profit contemporary art gallery based in London's East End. The gallery occupies the ground level of a former veneer factory on Chisenhale Road, situated in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, near Victoria Park and flanking the Hertford Union Canal. Housed in the same building are two other distinct initiatives: Chisenhale Studios and Chisenhale Dance Space, named also for the road on which they reside.

Daria Martin (born 1973) is a contemporary American artist and filmmaker based in London since 2002. Working primarily in 16mm film, her work has been exhibited in twenty four solo shows in public galleries including at the Barbican, The New Museum, and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. According to Martin, her films address the space between disparate states of being – levels of consciousness, internal and social worlds; subject and object. Martin's films also often explore the differences and similarities between other artistic mediums including painting, performance, dance, and sculpture.

Emma Kay is a British artist working with subjectivity and memory.

Bonnie Camplin is a British artist and a fine art lecturer at Goldsmiths College, London. She was a 2015 Turner Prize nominee, nominated for the exhibition The Military Industrial Complex, which was shown at the South London Gallery.

Park McArthur is a conceptual artist living in New York City who works in sculpture, installation, text, and sound. McArthur is a wheelchair user whose work uses this position to inform her art.

References

  1. 1 2 Wolk, Douglas (1998). "Dog Faced Hermans". Trouser Press . Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  2. ↑ Hadley, Tessa (9 July 2014). "The Iceberg: A Memoir by Marion Coutts – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Law, KAtie (30 June 2014). "It was my duty to stop Tom being destroyed before his death — and Eugene by it". Evening Standard . Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  4. ↑ Penny. "Undefining the Dog Faced Hermans". CKUT. Archived from the original on 12 November 2016. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 "Dog Faced Hermans (Television)". BBC. FSD. 25 May 1988.
  6. ↑ Robb, John (2009). Death to trad rock. London: Cherry Red Books. ISBN   978-1901447361.
  7. 1 2 Thorpe, Vanessa (20 December 2001). "Welcome to my world". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  8. 1 2 The Ex (1991). 6.4: Live at Bimhuis. Amsterdam: Ex Records.
  9. ↑ "Dull Schicksal: Dikke Mannen, CD 1993". www.pitchoune.nl. Kiss My Art. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  10. ↑ "Spaceheads First CD". Spaceheads. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  11. ↑ "The Honkies". Downtown Music Gallery. Archived from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  12. ↑ Peel, John. "Keeping It Peel - 19/04/1994: God Is My Co-Pilot". BBC. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  13. ↑ Cora, Tom; The Ex (1991). Scrabbling at the Lock (Sound recording). Amsterdam: Ex Records.
  14. 1 2 Arnaud, Danielle. "Fair Play". Danielle Arnaud. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  15. ↑ "Marion Coutts and Emma Hathaway". Gasworks. Triangle Arts Trust. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  16. 1 2 Hall, James (January 2003). "Marion Coutts". MutualArt. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  17. 1 2 "Cult". Chisenhale Gallery. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  18. ↑ "Mirror Mirror - Marion Coutts - A Commission". artdaily.org. 10 June 2005. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  19. ↑ "Marion Coutts: No Evil Star". BALTIC+. BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  20. ↑ "Twenty Six Things A film by Marion Coutts" (PDF).
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 Coutts, Marion (19 October 2015). "The Iceberg". 5x15. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  22. 1 2 "Marion Coutts". Goldsmith's University of London. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  23. ↑ "Marion Coutts « Cove Park". covepark.org. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
  24. ↑ Darwent, Charles (9 January 2011). "Tom Lubbock: Passionate and erudite chief art critic for 'The Independent' and 'The Independent on Sunday'". The Independent . Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  25. 1 2 Coutts, Marion. "Biography" . Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  26. ↑ "Andrew Solomon and Marion Coutts". Little Atoms. 2 March 2016. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  27. ↑ Williams, Mary Elizabeth (20 April 2016). "In 'The Iceberg,' Marion Coutts recounts the death of her husband and achieves something extraordinary". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  28. ↑ Brown, Mark (29 April 2015). "Marion Coutts wins 2015 Wellcome book prize for The Iceberg". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  29. ↑ Harris, Craig. "The Dog Faced Hermans" Album Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  30. 1 2 "Everglade". FVU. Arts Council England. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  31. ↑ "Twenty Six Things". Wellcome Collection. Archived from the original on 29 May 2016. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  32. 1 2 Cousot, Stéphane (10 October 2008). "Andy Moor". www.actoral.org (in French).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.