Dates: Aug 13 – Sep 4, 2004

Sugar Hiccup is based on my love of the music of Scottish band the Cocteau Twins as well as my interest in contemporary electronic musicians influenced by the Cocteau -Twins, in particular, and more generally, the genre of music known as Shoegazer.

When selecting the artists included in Sugar Hiccup, I put myself in the mindset of a Cocteau Twins / Shoegazer fan. My criteria for selection was rather straightforward : what would a fan, albeit one with a knowledge of recent developments in contemporary art, enjoy experiencing in a gallery.

A little background information: Shoegazer was an English music phenomenon popular briefly in the early and mid nineteen-nineties. The music consisted of “walls of sound” achieved through the use of heavily processed guitars. Lyrics were often indecipherable as vocals were mixed at an equal volume with instrumentals; in the case of the Cocteau Twins, songs were often composed of portmanteaux, “non-sense” words formed by combining portions of, or two actual words (example : floatboat). Seminal Shoegazer bands include My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Ride and Slowdive. Shoegazer is currently undergoing a revival – the result of a renewed interest on the part of a younger generation of musicians in creating organic, melodious electronic and computer based music.

Sugar Hiccup includes the work of the following artists :

London based painters Silke Otto-Knapp and Dee Ferris, Dutch film artists de Rijke / de Rooij, French artist Elisabeth Arkhipoff, United States based Scott Calhoun and Jennifer Ruff, Dutch artist Sebastiaan Bremer as well as Japanese photographer Naoko Tamura. American author, Scott Heim (Mysterious Skin), has created a piece of original text for the exhibition; in addition, Danish musician manual* (Jonas Munk) will perform live in conjunction with the exhibition.

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