Trevor Jackson – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Forever

This is an exhibition about imperfections. A show about how experience changes us and the objects and environment around us. Over the past four years Trevor Jackson has created a series of microscopic images taken of records from his extensive personal collection. The aim – to capture detailed images of vinyl surfaces, highlighting the individuality of physical sound waves visually distorted by scratches, stains and smears – wear and tear the artist unintentionally inflicted upon them during decades of use.  These large scale graphic prints are being shown together publicly for the first time at the 12Mail / Red Bull Space Gallery.

The work can be seen as a reflection of our personal relationships to objects and how we amend and change them through their use and interaction with the human body. Here they also become a form of self portraiture, capturing Jackson’s own personality and emotional relationship with his objects and music. The grooves of a record, blown up to super-human size, appear almost organic, Instead of regular mechanical lines these images resemble veins of plants or cells.
The records that are captured, magnified and transformed into the monolithic images within this devotional space, range from the radical noise of Public Enemy, ethereal house of FIngers inc, perfect pop of The Beach Boys to the pioneering electronics of Jean Michel Jarre, all paying tribute to the physical recorded medium. The choices were based more on the aesthetic value than their audio elements, The method of this creation reflects the nuances and care in the creation of music itself. Jackson adapted the eyepiece used by engineers to check the grooves in cutting rooms where records were mastered into a unique camera, these result in a visual manifestation of the hiss, crackle and pop of vinyl. A visual translation of our ritualistic relationship to vinyl and music in a wider sense.  A soundtrack for the show has been created by Trevor entirely from minuscule elements from the recordings on display and will be released as a limited edition vinyl single to coincide with the exhibition, containing a specially produced print.
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