Richard Crow

Richard Crow is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses sound and noise in a performative way, for its spatial and subjective qualities and above all for its psycho-physical implications for the listener. Over the past decade his solo and collaborative site-specific installations and performances have consisted of highly conceptualized interventions into base materiality, investigations of alternative systems of organisation and research into a certain material decadence, most notably with the project The Institution of Rot.

Born Richard Gill in November 1961, Somerset, England, has lived and worked in London since 1980. Begins to use the artist name Crow (shortened from Scarecrow) circa 1984. Crow's work as a visual artist spans solo and group installations and exhibitions, hybrid performance work, curatorial activity, and sound recordings with the group Diastolic Murmurs. He appears on a range of 1980's releases on Zan Hoffman's ZH27 label.

Crow utilises sound and noise in a performative way, for its disruptive and subjective qualities and above all for its psycho-physical implications for the listener and viewer. Over the decades his solo and collaborative works have consisted of highly conceptualized interventions into base materiality, investigations of alternative systems of organisation and research into a certain material decadence, most notably with the project The Institution of Rot which he co-founded with the writer Nick Couldry in 1992.

Since the mid 80s Crow has collaborated, performed, and recorded with a number of experimental musicians, sound poets and sonic artists including Andy Martin (as Black Cross), Duncan Jack of the legendary band What is Oil?, Paul and Chris Jakes (as the short lived band Hysterikal Naked) with Joe Banks (under the name Ashenden), Zan Hoffman, Phill Wachsmann, Adam Bohman (as Diastolic Murmurs), Richard Barrett, Furt, The Elision Ensemble,The Hafler Trio, Clive Graham, Michael Prime, Heimo Lattner, Dean Roberts, Kaffe Matthews, Michael Morley (Gate, The Dead C), Sandoz Lab Technicians, Tanaka-Nixon Meeting, Nigel Bunn, dy'na:mo, e-Xplo, Alessandro Bosetti, Dmitri Prigov, KREV (The Kingdoms of Elgaland Vargaland), Esther Planas, Gabriel Séverin, Gintas K, The Bohman Brothers, Richard Thomas, Aleksander Kolkowski, Nicola Woodham, Luke Jordan, Laura Netz, John Wall, Chandor Gloomy, Paul Harrison, Vera Bremerton (as Pest House) and The Lady of the Abyss.

Crow has shown and performed extensively in the UK and Europe, and internationally including Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico.

He has published many sound works since 1984 on labels such as ZH27(USA), Shelf Life (UK), Institution of Rot (UK), Vintage Productions (UK), Paradigm Discs (UK), Durian Records (Austria), ArtTrail (Ireland), Touch (UK), Chocolate Monk (UK), [RHP] CDRs (UK), EAM (UK), COMA †‡† KULTUR ƩNĐ ϴF DΔYS (Netherlands), Musica Dispersa Records (Spain), Nostalgie De La Boue (Ivory Coast), Psych.KG (Germany), La Bois Records (Germany).