Paul Rooney (artist)

The three CD music albums released from 1998 to 2000 under the band name Rooney (not the later US band of the same name)[9] were broadcast by BBC Radio 1 (John Peel Show) and BBC Radio 3 (Mixing It) amongst others,[10] and the track Went to Town reached number 44 in John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1998.[11] All of the Rooney songs were centred around lyrics describing banal events, everyday objects or mundane jobs, with home-recorded lo-fi music exalting/disrupting these observations in various ways. As well as a solo recording project, Rooney became a live band in time to record a Peel session in 1999, but the project ended after a third album was released in 2000.

Paul Rooney continued to perform or work with other musicians in the early 2000s, such as The NWRA House Band, touring a 'variety night' and a 'rock opera' amongst other performance projects.[12] His gallery works — now primarily sound/music based installations but also including video and writing — developed through commissions for organisations such as Sound and Music and Film and Video Umbrella,[13][14][15] and through a period of residencies and fellowships at institutions in the UK[16][17] (including Tate Liverpool[18] and Oxford University,[19]) and abroad, from Havana to Melbourne.

Paul Rooney: La Décision Doypack (commissioned by Radar and Matt's Gallery), 16mm film still, 2008.

Electric Earth: Film and Video from Britain, a British Council exhibition which toured internationally from 2003, included early music/video work by Rooney.[20] In 2004 he curated Pass the Time of Day, a UK touring exhibition dealing with the relationship between music and 'the everyday'. Pass the Time of Day included works by Arab Strap, Fugazi and Jem Cohen, Mark Leckey, Rodney Graham, Susan Philipsz and Phil Collins amongst others.[21][22][23][24] The following year Rooney's work was selected for the survey show British Art Show 6,[25][26] which toured the UK in 2005–2006. Rooney had solo shows at venues such as Site Gallery, Sheffield (a two-person show with Susan Philipsz, 2003); and Matt's Gallery, London (2008).[27][28][29]

He returned to releasing records in 2007 with the red vinyl 12" Lucy Over Lancashire, on SueMi Records of Berlin, a dub anti-hymn to North West England.[30][31] Released under his full name of 'Paul Rooney', it was specifically made for broadcast on BBC Radio Lancashire,[32][33][34] but BBC Radio 1[35] and BBC 6 Music were amongst the other stations who broadcast the piece (despite it being 16 minutes long), and it reached number 5 in that year's Festive Fifty, now organised by Dandelion Radio.[36][37][38]

In 2012 Rooney had a solo show in the Liverpool Biennial official programme, at which he launched Dust and Other Stories,[39] a collection of short fiction.

The Rooney Peel session was repeated in 2016 on Gideon Coe's BBC 6 Music show,[40] and in 2017 Rooney's first album for seventeen years, Futile Exorcise, was released on Owd Scrat Records on transparent vinyl.[41] The album was on Stewart Lee's list of best records of 2017[42] and a track from it, Lost High Street, reached number 1 on the 2017 Dandelion Radio Festive Fifty.[43] Owd Scrat Records was launched by Paul Rooney and other collaborators in 2014, and releases works by artists who are pseudonyms/fictional creations of Rooney himself. It has released work by The Seven Heads of Gog Magog, The Creeping Things and Alain Chamois amongst others.[44]

• Website
• Owd Scrat Records
• Arts Council Collection
• Contemporary Art Society
• LUX
• Film and Video Umbrella
• Matt's Gallery
• Vimeo
• iTunes