Photo: Press
"Our love was my womb," pines Bjork on new album Vulnicura's centre-piece, 'Black Lake'.
Bjork has always sought to map her inner workings and movements onto the world around her - be it a womb, a mountain or a skyscraper. It is her harnessing and curation of the elements, both physical and metaphysical, that makes her an artist like no other. It also means that through her music and her vision, she can create a world of their own. Gigwise were thrilled to take a stroll through this world at New York's Metropolitan Museum Of Art.
The experience begins with the MoMA-commissioned music video for 'Black Lake', directed by Andrew Thomas Huang (the man behind 'Brennisteinn' by Sigur Ros, 'Before Your Very Eyes' by Atoms For Peace and Bjork's own 'Mutual Core'). More a mini-epic short film than a music video, it shows Bjork translating the turmoil of her separation from long-term partner and artist Matthew Barney into a painting with the elements. She searches for answers amid the caves, valleys and volcanoes of Iceland, finding her way through the landscape and reacting with nature, before an eruption of blue lava and her wings dissolve.
It stands among her finest visuals, and acts as not only the perfect focus point for the exhibition, but as a crystalised portrait of Bjork in 2015.
In the screening room next door, a selection of Bjork's music videos from her first seven albums are projected onto a big screen and in high definition audio. Films for the likes of 'Who Is It' and 'Human Behaviour' have always been about more than just promoting an album - they're about collaboration and celebration, and deserve to be enjoyed in full audio-visual splendour, rather than in a tiny Youtube video.
The main exhibition space upstairs, Songlines, boasts a timeline of Bjork as an artist, a woman and a mother. An audio guide relays the narrative as you move through the space. Written by the acclaimed Icelandic writer Sjón, the audio is an admittedly somewhat tongue-in-check exaggeration of Bjork's life turned into a fable - detailing her evolution and life between the island and the city, between love and influence, childhood and motherhood - with some familiar landmarks along the way. It's a pleasure to see the swan dress, the airmail jacket from Post, the robots from 'All Is Full Of Love', the colour of the Volta costumes and the Biophillia dress in the flesh - illuminating her inimitable flair for turning imagination into reality.
You're left with no doubt, as Sjón says,that Bjork "isn't whole, but made of so much more", "fragmented inside and outside", "a tree with a heart of every branch" and made entirely of "primal originality, craving independence".
Critics have so far compared the exhibition to the MoMA exhibition of a fellow musical shapeshifter: David Bowie. The David Bowie Is... exhibition worked so perfectly because there was 50 years worth of archive material to work with. Therein lies the only criticism of Bjork's MoMA show: there's so much life behind her work that you can't help but feel that even among the costumes, instruments and lyrics we never quite get under her skin. Bjork's work in film and what goes into her mind-melting live shows are worthy of far more attention than given here, and we craved a little more of the interaction, innovation and depth that goes into her music - to make it more of an 'experience'.
But don't let that detract from what is ultimately a must-see for any fans of Bjork, or lovers of music, art and fashion in general. This is no less than a personal, intimate and grand realisation and tribute to her visual language, her journey, her vision, or as Bjork herself phrases it it 'Joga', her 'emotional landscapes' - puzzling but beautiful.
Bjork's MoMA exhibition is open at New York's Museum Of Modern Art from now until 7 June, 2015. Meanwhile, her upcoming 2015 tour dates are below. For tickets and information, see below.
MARCH
14 – New York, NY - Carnegie Hall
18 – Brooklyn, NY - Kings Theatre
25 – New York, NY - City Center
28 – New York, NY - City Center
APRIL
01 – New York, NY - City Center
04 – New York, NY - City Center
JUNE
05-07 – New York, NY - Governors Ball Music Festival
JULY
05 – Manchester, UK - Castlefield Bowl
AUGUST
11 – Trencin, SL - Pohoda Festival
16 – Ostrava, CZ - Colours of Ostrava Festival
29 – Rome, IT - Cavea, Auditorium Parco della Musica
AUGUST
05 – Oxfordshire, UK - Wilderness Festival
