Paul Schütze

Paul Schutze has worked for over thirty years as an artist in the fields of, photography, video, sound and installation. He was a founding member of Australian experimental band Laughing Hands and of Phantom City: an international collective of musicians working both live and virtually from points across the globe. He has performed with sound & film works in over a dozen countries and released over thirty albums of original music. His works have been exhibited in numerous international galleries and museums (V&A, The Hayward, Reina Sofia, IVAM, British Museum). His photographic work is held in both public and private collections including The British Museum, Pallant House and the Speed Museum. He has collaborated with major international artists including James Turrell, Josiah McElheny & Isaac Julien and musicians including Bill Laswell, Lol Coxhill, Toshinori Kondo, Raoul Bjorkenheim, Clive Bell, Dirk Wachtaeler, Max Eastley, Jah Wobble, Robert Hamson and David Toop. Paul runs the online sensory archive Dressing The Air and in 2014 introduced olfactory elements into his artwork. In 2016 He launched fragrance house Paul Schutze Perfume with partner Chris Rickwood.This work is a reflection on the uncanny parralells found in our anthropogenic environmental transformation and the Nordic myths of Ragnarok in which the earth is subsumed by water as a consequence of divine conflict. In the myth, the world emerges from the waters reborn and purged.The sky tore apart and the sun curdled like a diseased eye.Below, where once a continent of ice spanned the horizon,there lay nothing but a vast expanding mirror, implacable and silent.For days, clouds of flying creatures scoured its surface for purchasebefore falling exhausted into their own reflections.