Paul Rooney

Paul Rooney’s work is concerned with the relationships between sound, (popular) music, memory and the everyday. Employing, then over-turning traditional documentary forms, Rooney gathers evidence, re-presenting testimony as filmed performances, with scripted interviews sung in appropriately vernacular styles. These sung narratives take the form of a soundtrack to an often un-peopled site that is directly connected to the original narrative. In doing this, Rooney explores the deeply emotive power of music and associative memory.

‘Music shifts perception radically, and can elicit deeply subjective and fluctuating relationships with the visual. It can make something communicable of day-to-day existence, which becomes something other than the commonplace. In some cases it can alter our engagement with the present enough to disrupt the moment, potentially creating a space for thought, or for historical memory.’ (Rooney 2005)

Paul Rooney was born in 1967 and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art 1991 where he achieved a BA in Painting and an MA in Fine Art. He has recently had solo shows at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2008) and Matt’s Gallery, London (2008) and has undertaken a series of fellowships at the University of Wolverhampton, Ruskin School of Drawing and Victorian College of Arts and Tate Liverpool. Selected group exhibitions include ‘Art Sheffield 08: Yes, No, Other Options’ at Millennium Galleries (2008); ‘Cine y Casi Cine’ at the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2007) and ‘Single Shot’ at Tate Britain (2006) Rooney lives in Liverpool.