Farewell Tour

Farewell Tour is an exhibition which centres around an ambient psych-rock band of the same name. It’s a blend of art show and band archive, focusing on themes of love, friendship, and grief. Farewell Tour by conceptual artists Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, is a cathartic response to grief arising from Chanelle’s Stage 4 cancer diagnosis in 2023.

Joe and Chanelle, in dealing with a terminal illness, have become engaged in the death care space around dying and aftercare; through their practice they engage with the mortality space and build dialogue in this fragile and often hidden aspect of everyday life.

The exhibition consists of music studio objects such as sound baffles and go between barriers, painted records and music related small sculptures. A rich tapestry of soundscapes are available to accompany the physical works and include various field recordings and live performance recordings. This exhibition can be accompanied by a live performance by the band.

Farewell Tour‘s music incorporates field recordings, guitars and vocals; drawing on themes of love, death, and loss, and operates under the concept of “…an epic love story of a band where every song is their last. A never ending farewell tour.” This central concept posits the band’s entire existence as a continuous, drawn-out goodbye, lending a unique sense of urgency and finality to each performance and recording. Every song is a farewell and every concert a culminating event; yet the tour seeks to go on as long as it can, in a perpetual state of epilogue and reinvention. This meta-narrative invites audiences into the transient present of life, into the soft lines between the band’s reality and its fateful mythology.

Exhibition Video