Bomberg: Motion & Music

About

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. 

Our 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 we perform tonight, we 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 our middle set we 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.

Finally, we look to London in its longstanding role as a social and creative hub for artists. 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.