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Prof Colin Fallows

Liverpool School of Art and Design

Faculty of Arts Professional and Social Studies

Email: C.Fallows@ljmu.ac.uk

Telephone: 0151 904 1149

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Prof. Colin Fallows is an artist, curator and Professor of Sound and Visual Arts at Liverpool John Moores University. His research explores crossovers between sound and the visual arts, frequently investigating the conditions and potentialities of listening in resonant spaces. As artist and curator, he has produced soundworks for live ensemble performance, recordings, exhibition, installation, radio and the Internet – and his artistic and curatorial projects have featured in numerous international festivals, galleries and museums world-wide.

He leads the Colin Fallows Ensemble – an electric guitar group dedicated to the performance of multi-layered soundworks, dense with microtones which generate numerous overtones through bespoke tuning to resonant performance spaces. The CFE performed Reverbs (2015–17), a series of related compositions by Fallows for prepared and treated electric guitars, at Wilkinson Gallery, London - staged in collaboration with Boudicca fashion house, and recorded in ambisonic surround-sound by the British Library Sound Archive for publication as limited edition artist’s multiples. Related works by Prof. Fallows include Colourfield For Strings (2012) originally produced as an immersive sound installation in conjunction with the exhibition of Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals at Tate Liverpool (2009). The installation utilised a dense sonic mix of sustained electric guitar recordings by Fallows and Will Sergeant (Echo & The Bunnymen). Further versions of Colourfield For Strings included: music for the play Red (by John Logan) about Rothko, with accompanying sound installation at EuroTheater Central, Bonn, Germany (2012-13); and a one-hour radio programme for ORF Kunstradio, Vienna, Austria (2013) for listeners to experience the piece via three radio sources simultaneously. CFE published recordings are in many permanent collections including: Tate Archives; the British Library Sound Archive; the Research Centre for Artists’ Publications, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen, Germany; SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts; the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia; and the Archive of Recorded Sound, Stanford University, USA.

Prof. Fallows’ large-scale curated exhibitions, with related internationally distributed book publications, reinterpret previously under-researched figures and works in popular culture/counterculture. These include: Stuart Sutcliffe – A Retrospective (2008); Astrid Kirchherr – A Retrospective (2010); Cut-ups, Cut-ins, Cut-outs: The Art of William S. Burroughs at the Kunsthalle, Vienna (2012) and the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2013); and INTO THE LIGHT – Jamie Reid: A Memorial Exhibition (2024) at the Exhibition Research Lab, Liverpool School of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University.

As curator and researcher, Prof. Fallows has been instrumental in the strategic acquisition of world-class archives of popular culture and counterculture held at Liverpool John Moores University. Counterculture Archives and Exhibitions is a long-term research and curatorial project founded in 2000 by Prof. Colin Fallows at LJMU where he has strategically compiled the biggest punk archive in the world. The project focuses on punk, its relationship to counterculture antecedents and to wider socio-political contexts. Prof. Fallows engages with artists, authors and collectors in the strategic identification, cataloguing and acquisition of specific archives followed by research and curatorial practice. Exhibitions and events create impact on the cultural sector and international public audiences. The significance and wide reach of this impact is demonstrated through institutional partnerships, high-profile exhibitions and cultural events, publicity reach, and support from the cultural sector, including key progenitors of the movement. Prof. Fallows has curated rare, and many previously unseen materials from across the Counterculture Archives held at LJMU, in a variety of contexts, in a series of large-scale exhibitions in galleries and museums, experienced by over one-million people across nine countries. The exhibition Punk 1976–78 (2016) curated by Prof. Fallows (with Cleary, S. & Linehan, A.) at the British Library, London coincided with the 40th anniversary of the unique cultural phenomenon. This ongoing research also resulted in Prof. Fallows discovering and curating Sex Pistols – April 1976: The Art of PT Madden (2016) at Wilkinson Gallery, London, in an exhibition that presented and contextualised all twenty-six surviving photographs as a unified artwork for the first time.

Previous curatorial work in the field of art and technology includes Prof. Fallows’ role as Director of ISEA98 (International Symposium on Electronic Art, 1998); curator (with Grundmann, H.) and contributor in Sound Drifting: I Silenzi Parlano Tra Loro (1999), a nine-day long continuous on line – on site – on air international sound installation on the occasion of the Ars Electronica festival, Linz, Austria. He was an invited judging panel member for the Sciart and Science on Stage and Screen awards, Wellcome Trust, London, and chair of the allied award-winners symposium at the Liverpool Biennial (2002); and Director of Art–Place–Technology: International Symposium on Curating New Media Art (2006), FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology), Liverpool. He curated Location Installations, Location Live and the Location Conference at Futuresonic 2004: International Festival of Electronic Music and Media Arts, Manchester. He was a founder member of the Board of Directors (2005 – 2015), Chair of the International Awards Panel (2010 – 2015), and Chair of the Editorial Board (2013 – 2015) at Future Everything: the UK’s International Festival of Art, Music and Ideas.

Prof. Fallows has supervised 25 PhDs and over 60 MRes to successful completion. He has examined research degrees at numerous UK universities including the Royal College of Art; University of Nottingham; Northumbria University; Manchester Metropolitan University; University of Salford; Goldsmiths College and Birkbeck College, University of London.

Prof. Colin Fallows is Director of the Contemporary Art Lab and Head of Research Degrees at the Liverpool School of Art and Design. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

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