18 February – 20 March 2021
Rhys Coren
Susie Green
Hassan Hajjaj
Rosie Hastings and Hannah Quinlan
Joel Kyack
Laura Lancaster
Hardeep Pandhal
Matt Stokes
David Steans
Sue Tompkins
‘Thursday evenings were Top of the Pops. Half an hour of blissful TV. The sets, lights, colours – future possibilities. I loved Madonna and have a memory of her in a pink wig singing ‘Like a Virgin’. It was 1983, I was 4. I sung it for weeks afterwards, dancing in the sitting room.
And then Neneh Cherry, pregnant and owning it in cycling shorts. Not long after that, I got ‘Raw Like Sushi’ on cassette for my 9th birthday. I studied the photos on the fold-out inlay sleeve, (which I later found out were by Judy Blame), and couldn’t wait to grow up so I could be like Neneh, and wear gold dollar jewellery heavy around my neck.
As a teenager, Top of the Pops was replaced with The Chart Show on a Saturday afternoons. I would watch it before going to meet my friends outside the local shopping centre. I saw the video for ‘Venus as a Boy’ by Bjork and was struck, in love. I knew the song was sexy, I’d never seen or heard anything like it. Then at 13, I received her album ‘Debut’ on cassette for Christmas.
These early influencers, powerful female performers, their stages, clothes and worlds gave me a place to put my big aspirations, outside of my small bedroom. When I felt a need for release, they were there for me. Learn the songs by heart, press play on my tape deck, sing along and dance it out.
Music videos were my first interaction with art. Watching and listening to them was an education. To not be limited by this material world, to go somewhere else.
So exciting, glamorous, hopeful.’
Susie Green, 2021