Everything I Have Is Yours

4 July 2019 — 3 November 2019

Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive)
at Salford Museum and Art Gallery

Everything I Have Is Yours is an ambitious film and sound work by Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive) that looks back to the first decade of the UK pop charts (1952-62). Working with a group of older musicians – many of whom are the ‘original teenagers’ of the Greater Manchester music scene, now in their 70s and 80s – this film focuses on this diverse group as they re-engage with public-domain samples from the formative era of the ‘birth of pop’, and incorporate these timeless sounds into new musical creations. When the musicians play, they individually and collectively interact with digital technology, recalling archive sounds ripped from 1950s and early 1960s shellac and vinyl chart hits. As the group trigger these sounds from the past, the camera continuously tracks its way through the assembled musicians, echoing the circular loops of the music itself.

Everything I Have Is Yours has been commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Contemporary Art Society, University of Salford Art Collection and Castlefield Gallery. An edition of the film will enter the University of Salford Art Collection.

To coincide with the launch of Everything I Have Is Yours, Castlefield Gallery will present Eileen Simpson and Ben White: Open Music Archive, the first UK survey show of the artists’ work from 14 June – 18 August 2019. The exhibition presents a selection of projects developed over the last ten years in which the artists explore the performative potential of the archive by reanimating copyright-expired archive material.

Image: Eileen Simpson and Ben White, Everything I Have Is Yours, 2019. (Ungraded film still 1) 2019 (cc) by-sa 4.0. Image courtesy of the artists.

Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, the Contemporary Art Society, University of Salford Art Collection and Castlefield Gallery through ‘Equal Shares’ 2019