Paul Rooney is an English musician-artist who works with 'music and words', primarily through records and installations.
Biography
Paul Rooney studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating with an MFA in 1991. In 1998 his art practice shifted from painting to music, initially with the band Rooney and their three experimental lo-fi punk pop albums about everyday life. During the 2000s, Paul Rooney's art works — now primarily sound/music based installations but also including video and writing — developed through a period of residencies and fellowships at institutions in the UK and abroad, including Tate Liverpool and Oxford University, and through commissions for organisations such as Sound and Music and Film and Video Umbrella. His art works often explored the difficulties inherent in the representation of 'place'. The curator Claire Doherty wrote that: "Rooney asserts occupation of place through real and fictional occurrences, acknowledging the overlooked and proposing the equal status of urban myth and lived experience." Rooney was the winner of Art Prize North in 2003, the Northern Art Prize in 2008, and the Morton Award for Lens Based Work in 2012. His works have been purchased for the Arts Council Collection and through the Contemporary Art Society Acquisitions Scheme. In 2014 Rooney founded the label Owd Scrat Records and in 2017 he returned to making solo albums with the release of .
Music
The three CD music albums released from 1998 to 2000 under the band name Rooney were broadcast by BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 3 amongst others, and the track Went to Town reached number 44 in John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1998. All of the Rooney songs were centred around lyrics describing banal events, everyday objects or mundane jobs, with home-recorded lo-fi music exalting/disrupting these observations in various ways. As well as a solo recording project, Rooney became a live band in time to record a Peel session in 1999, but the project ended after a third album was released in 2000. Paul Rooney continued to perform or work with other musicians after this however, such as The NWRA House Band, touring a 'variety night' and a 'rock opera' amongst other performance projects. He returned to releasing records in 2007 with the red vinyl 12" Lucy Over Lancashire, on SueMi Records of Berlin, a dub anti-hymn to North West England. Released under his full name of 'Paul Rooney', it was specifically made for broadcast on BBC Radio Lancashire, but BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music were amongst the other stations who broadcast the piece, and it reached number 5 in that year's Festive Fifty, now organised by Dandelion Radio. The Rooney Peel session was repeated in 2016 on Gideon Coe's BBC 6 Music show, and in 2017 Rooney's first album for seventeen years, Futile Exorcise, was released on Owd Scrat Records on transparent vinyl – again billed as 'Paul Rooney'. The album was on Stewart Lee's list of best records of 2017 and a track from it, Lost High Street, reached number 1 on the 2017 Dandelion Radio Festive Fifty. Owd Scrat Records was launched by Paul Rooney and other collaborators in 2014, and releases works by artists who are pseudonyms/fictional creations of Rooney himself. It has released work by The Seven Heads of Gog Magog, The Creeping Things and Alain Chamois amongst others. The latter two artists also appeared in the Dandelion Radio Festive Fifty of 2018.
Exhibitions
Electric Earth: Film and Video from Britain, a British Council exhibition which toured internationally from 2003, included early music/video work by Rooney. In 2004 he curated Pass the Time of Day, a UK touring exhibition dealing with the relationship between music and 'the everyday'. Pass the Time of Day included works by Arab Strap, Fugazi and Jem Cohen, Mark Leckey, Rodney Graham, Susan Philipsz and Phil Collins amongst others. The following year Rooney's work was selected for the survey show British Art Show 6, which toured the UK in 2005–2006. Rooney has undertaken solo shows at venues such as Site Gallery, Sheffield ; Matt's Gallery, London ; and the 2012 Liverpool Biennial official programme.
Discography
EPs and singles
Got Up Late, Common Culture Different Kinds of Road Signs, Common Culture Foreign People Speaking, Common Culture Lucy Over Lancashire 12", SueMi Lucy Over Lancashire, Owd Scrat Interference Zone: The Tapes of Alan Smithson, Owd Scrat Shake it Off, Owd Scrat Lucy Over Lancashire, Owd Scrat New Theme to Still at Large, Owd Scrat L E T M E T A K E Y O U T H E R E, Owd Scrat Stolen Things, Owd Scrat This Job's Forever - The Peel Session, Owd Scrat
Albums
Time on Their Hands, Common Culture On Fading Out, Common Culture On the Closed Circuit, Common Culture Futile Exorcise, Owd Scrat 1981, Owd Scrat The Seven Oracles of Gog Magog, Owd Scrat
Compilations
Subculture Fanzine CD1, Subculture 02 - Flux Collectable CD2 , Flux magazine Ua2, Underwood Audio Radio Radio, Revolver The Topography of Chance. Curated by Stewart Lee. Sound Arts Network The Drift: Fool Me, New Media Scotland Wire Tapper 44, TheWire Magazine
