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Andy Gill - An Obituary

Andy Gill – guitarist, producer Born January 1, 1956; died February 1, 2020 Andy Gill, who has died aged 64, was one of the most influential and inventive guitarists of his generation. As co-founder of Gang of Four, his abrasive and metallic guitar shards captured the urgency of the punk era, yet retained a skewed funkiness that suggested dance music as an incendiary and oppositionist force. Offset by the serious intent of songs such as At Home He’s A Tourist and To Hell with Poverty, Gang of Four gave the anything-goes eclecticism that punk opened up an extra edge. The band’s debut release, the Damaged Goods EP, released on Edinburgh’s Fast Product label in October 1978, was one of the earliest records now regarded as post-punk. The original Gang of Four’s mould-breaking sound forged by Gill with singer Jon King, bass player Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham eventually gave rise to a new wave of bands such as The Rapture. This in part inspired the quartet to reconvene i

The Place I Call Home

Summerhall. Edinburgh until March 8 th Four stars Building a home, as demonstrated by the fifteen photographers and film-makers in this British Council touring exhibition travelling across ten venues in the Middle East and UK, is about more than four walls and a door. Pulled together by Cardiff-based Ffotogallery director David Drake, the show brings together work by artists from both territories to create a disparate community occupying the same global village. Kids play football and sit on walls in Xo, Josh Adams Jones’ studies of Oman’s ex-pats. In Melting Boundaries, Gillian Robertson captures a group of teenagers posing on a bench beside a tree, looking invincible enough to take on whatever world you’ve got. Such enlivened everydayness proves similarly captivating in Beyond Home, Hussain Almosawi and Mariam Alarab’s series of images of Bahraini immigrants who built new lives in Britain. En route to this, however, are the ruined mosques on the road to Medina in Moath

Lucy McKenzie – Pleasure’s Inaccuracies

Sudbury Town Tube Station in London is set to be the striking venue for a large scale public art commission of permanent and temporary works by Glasgow-born artist Lucy McKenzie. Pleasure’s Inaccuracies is the latest venture by Art on the Underground, set up to bring work by contemporary artists to the heart of tube stations, public spaces which are constantly in motion. From April 2 nd 2020, commuters will be able to witness two permanent hand- painted ceiling murals by McKenzie featuring maps of the local area. An architectural model of the station will also be on permanent display, while two large billboards will be installed on each platform, with silk screen posters shown within the station until April 2021. T he cavernous central hall and waiting rooms of Sudbury Town station’s listed Piccadilly line building were designed by Charles Holden in 1931, and now resembles a relic from a lost London. Originally built after the original station was demolished in preparation for