Eston Arts Centre will welcome a brand new exhibition from Friday 9th – Saturday 31st July in the form of Uncanny Island by Luke Haines.
Uncanny Island is Luke Haines’ debut art exhibition and will feature a Fall Xmas Tree and psychedelic visions – in acrylic and oils on canvas – of British wrestlers from the ‘70s and early ’80s.
Luke noted: “In 2019, I had started painting Christmas tree baubles with the faces of members of the legendary Manchester group, The Fall. The baubles were given away to friends as gifts to decorate their Xmas trees. Wouldn’t it be great to paint all 66 members of The Fall on a bauble, I thought (wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it…?). It was a big, time-consuming project that had no home or the hours needed to complete it”.
He added: “In 2020, as the country knuckled down in the first few months of lockdown, I received an email from the artist Neil McNally asking if I would be interested in exhibiting some of my paintings at Eston Art Centre. My Fall Xmas tree now had a home.”
Luke has been painting wrestlers since 2011 when he recorded an album called ‘Nine And A Half Psychedelic Visions Of British Wrestling From The Late 1970s To The Early ’80s. These new canvases, painted specially for the ‘Uncanny Island’ exhibition, represent the most fully realised visions of the era of World Of Sport wrestling. Behold, an apocalypse of Half Nelsons and Kamikaze Crashes. “Easy, easy, easy. Don’t touch his ears!”
Luke Haines has been a singer-songwriter for three decades, first with The Auteurs, whose debut album ‘New Wave’ was nominated for the 1993 Mercury prize. His next group, Black Box Recorder, scored a hit and a Top Of The Pops appearance with ‘The Facts Of Life’ (2000). Luke’s memoir ‘Bad Vibes – Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall’ was a bestselling book in 2009. From the early 2000s, Haines has released 14 solo albums, plus collaborations with the acclaimed Irish songwriter Cathal Coughlan in 2011 (‘The North Sea Scrolls’) and REM’s Peter Buck on the acclaimed 2020 album, ‘Beat Poetry For The Survivalist’. His latest album ‘Luke Haines In …Setting The Dogs On The Post-Punk Postman’ is out now and he tours the UK with Peter Buck in September. This is his first art exhibition.
For further information, head to Facebook.com/estonartscentre.
