A page of Iain and Jane's notes from the making of Never more than this

For the touring exhibition Beck's New Contemporaries, an annual showcase of cutting edge ideas by students and recent graduates from the UK's art schools, Iain and Jane produced Never More Than This, an audio CD project that visitors to the exhibition were able to hear the disc at three 'HMV-style' listening stations located within the galleries. This CD single was also cover-mounted on the exhibition catalogue.

"Obviously, the next step for many artists working in and around the pop arena is the production of their own music. Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard have made a CD single, Never More Than This, as their contribution to this year's New Contemporaries exhibition; directing a group of musicians into making a boy bandesque track that belies their status as total indie kids and offers dance remixes. Unnervingly polished, it is their first attempt at writing songs." More...

Susan Corrigan, i-D Magazine

To record the track and make the remixes Iain and Jane pulled together a group of session musicians to work with them, often resorting to communicating their ideas for the song through drawings laying out the structure of the song.

"Iain and Jane's status as visual artists makes their appropriation of the processes of production an interesting exercise. By drawing from youth culture and their own adolescence as pop music fans, and by taking on the tasks of learning how to dissect and reproduce something which fulfills the criteria of the pop music industry, they played the roles of entrepreneur, performer and producer simultaneously. It is not so much a critique of the pop music industry as an exploration of it, and perhaps one of the most playful and self-conscious manifestations of the artist-as-pop-star syndrome."

CCA Exhibitions Guide

Never more than this
Audio CD single, 3 tracks (1997)

First exhibited in Beck's New Contemporaries '97 at Cornerhouse, Manchester, Camden Arts Centre, London and Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow from May 1997 - January 1998

 

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