Somewhere Else – Frank Briffa

Somewhere Else – Frank Briffa

Venue: Python Gallery
When: 09/09/2011 – 06/10/2011
Admission: Free

This exhibition showcases Franks beautiful, complex and involved abstract paintings which are compellingly linked to his passion for music; they describe in his own idiosyncratic pictorial and gestural language the ways in which music informs and transforms our creative existence.
In the artists’ words:
Somewhere Else

Some forms of music have the power of taking us somewhere else. The paintings in this exhibition all have strong links with music which, for me, have this quality. The paintings are based on pieces I have known over a long period of time so that I know them very well and they have had time to work on me.

In making these paintings I am not primarily trying to illustrate anything (although sometimes figurative elements do emerge) but rather to try to find pictorial equivalents to the musical language. Links between music and painting already exist – there is a shared vocabulary – composition, colour, texture, tonality etc.

Composers whose work I have used include Mahler, Ives, Varese, Martinu, Berg, Tippett, Nielsen, Stravinsky, Webern. In some cases the painting is a response to the whole piece, in others to a section of the work – sometimes just a few bars.