To celebrate the amazing exhibition we saw late last year that introduced Dappled Cities’ ‘Zounds’ album to the world, Groupie caught up the artists who provided their visual interpretations of songs on the record. One of the artists who has a piece showing at MART Gallery from next Tuesday is Julie Doyle, a painter who give us an eyeful in her interpretation of the Dappled single ‘The Price’.

What track from ‘Zounds’ were you asked to interpret and what were your immediate impressions?
I was given the song ‘The Price’ and as it was the first single released, I had already heard the song on the radio, so I kind of had a sneak peak of my song.

How did you go about putting the vibes you were getting from the track into a physical installation?
I tried to incorporate both the lyrics of the song and the flow of the music in my work with the chorus “don’t take your eyes away” forming the primary basis for my installation, I created eyeballs that were placed on the ground, forming a path, following and leading the audience through the room.

What do you want your audience to take from the work?
It would be great if the audience forms a memorable association between the song and the artwork, I wouldn’t ask for more than that really.

Did it force you to use an unusual or different process to your normal art practice?
Predominately I create painted works on canvas and my works are a mash-up of influences and styles so I took the same approach but applied it to a three dimensional installation, essentially creating one of my paintings that you could walk through and be surrounded by.

On a more general level, do you think music has a strong influence on visual art?
Absolutely. Whenever I am creating art I am always listening to music and the music that I am listening to at the time plays a large part in the outcome of the end work. My early exposure to art was through the record covers in my father’s music collection, Peter Blake and the Beatles, Martin Sharp and Cream, I would always study the covers while I listened to the records, so to me music and art have always had a strong association and that is pretty evident in my work.

It’s been a fair while since you first heard the track now – apart from using a different space for this new exhibit, have you altered your installation in any way? What did you change and why?
My installation for the new exhibition will be quite different from my original work as I have had to change it to a wall piece, I will be creating a three dimensional mural on the wall that will spill on to the ground and throughout the gallery space… I don’t want to give too much away though…

Would you be involved in similar projects in future?
It was such a great project and really worked so well. I would love to help form a stronger association between music and art by being involved in future projects.  As an artist the opportunities for exposing your work to the public are scarce so a greater allegiance between the creative communities would benefit everyone and could only help in creating a culturally rich environment.

The Dappled Cities exhibition lands at MART Gallery on Tuesday June 1.