23 artists make a ‘preparation’ each for a grand piano. Three sets of musicians are then tasked with constructing individual live performances with the adaptable unit of preparations.
The third Late Works: Preparations took place once more at Cafe OTO on the same Yamaha C3 grand piano, carrying over the same limitations from the first two iterations.
Building on the idea of having a duo 'four hands' on the piano for Preparations ii, Preparations iii had a trio (Gentle Stranger) playing 'six hands' on the piano, with Alex McKenzie & Josh Barfoot mostly on the keys and Tom Hardwick-Allan moving objects around, singing and playing another smaller toy piano off to stage left.
As with Preparations ii, all 23 sculptures remained inside the piano throughout the event.
Musicians: Stanley Welch, otta & Gentle Stranger
Artists: Olivia Albanell, Fan Bangyu, Hayett Belarbi-Mccarthy, Ellis Berwick, Zoe de Caluwé, Patrick Cole, Verity Coward, Mandeep Dillon, Natalya Marconini Falconer, Alia Hamaoui, Ellen Poppy Hill, Joseph Bradley Hill, Louie Isaaman-Jones, Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban, Pheobe riley Law, Vita Lerche, Joe Moss, Eleni Papazoglou, Alexandra Phillips, Gillies Adamson Semple, Thirza Smith & Dominic Watson.
Concept, curation & design: Joseph Bradley Hill • Sound Engineer: Rory Salter
Special thanks to Fielding, Abby, Oli, Barney, Clare & Midori!
Stanley Welch’s set opened and closed with a tribute to David Bowie, or more specifically Bowie’s nose, the subject of Dominic Watson’s preparation David Bowie (Market Square, Aylesbury) (a pewter cast of the nose of a David Bowie statue). Welch then continued playing almost non-stop through the nearly 30 minute set, shifting through section after section of percussive, theatrical, almost vaudevillian sounds. Throughout, Welch used Joseph Bradley Hill’s Roller (With Hidden Paolozzi) to dampen the bass strings, and the main preparations that punctuated the performance were the lid of Joe Moss’ Loot Box slamming open and shut, and Vita Lerche’s Piano Bell sliding along the strings. A brief whistling interlude added to one of the more romantic refrains in the centre of the piece, and as Welch rattled towards the end, works by Vita Lerche, Gillies Adamson Semple, Patrick Cole, Eleni Papazoglou and Zoe de Caluwé were shifted onto the bass strings to provide him with a dense padding that converted to a loud thumping noise he used to great effect (and to close his performance).
otta’s performance unfurled like a conversation with the piano, building on motifs and altering the layout of the preparations inside the piano to suit each individual exploration. Preparations that otta utilised include Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban’s ‘I never held emotion in the palm of my hand’ (a keyring holding locker keys, a plastic surfboard and dolphin and a small Lotto game, used as a rattle and to dangle over and between the strings), Alia Hamaoui’s peachskin velvet I & II (plastic name tags with pewter cast peach pips attached), Natalya Marconi Falconer’s Between Debris and Thing (an aluminium cast of a fennel husk), and one part of Pheobe riley Law’s shape placing (a unique morph of steel and rubber coating, laser cut into interesting flat shapes). Ellis Berwick’s Electreight (a bike bell sat on its own inverted base) is often returned to by otta as a flourish to mark beginnings and ends of different phrases. A large section of the performance involved bringing Joe Moss’ vibrating Loot Box up to one of the stereo microphones hanging above her head to create a consistent buzzing, whilst she continued to improvise on the piano below. The playful performance felt like an evolving improvised dialogue with the materials at hand, with otta adapting to the effects the preparations made to each refrain.
Gentle Stranger’s performance differed from the other two in that there were three musicians or “six hands” playing on the piano, with Alex McKenzie taking over the high end melodic section of the piano, Josh Barfoot staying towards the lower end, controlling the majority of the percussive rhythm section of the piece, and Tom Hardwick-Allan using extended piano techniques, singing and moving the preparations around the inside of the piano whilst the other two played the keys. Hardwick-Allan began the performance on a tiny red toy piano (prepared by Olivia Albanell’s Fat Wasp and Ellis Berwick’s Piammer) a metre or so stage left of the grand piano. The two pianos were connected by a group phone call that echoed and fed back inside the body of the piano, with Barfoot and McKenzie’s phones sat inside Hayett Belarbi-McCarthy’s Dear Obsolescence (antique silk) & Verity Coward’s Wodge (a fake wodge of £20 notes) respectively. The phones were the first of many objects the trio secretly brought to Cafe OTO that broke the rules for Preparations initially laid out by Joseph Bradley Hill. The objects included a megaphone, a metronome, a cassette tape and mini-amplifier, an electronic mouse deterrer and, technically, Hardwick-Allan’s shoes which fell off as Barfoot and McKenzie carried him from one side of the piano to the other, dropping him onto the piano keys in the process. The performance moves through roughly eight stages using these objects and the 23 already inside, with each section a different take on the prepared piano’s possibilities. The performance reaches its end with a wail by Hardwick-Allan into the resonant body of the piano (the sustain held down by a weight placed their earlier), followed by a ‘wedding song’ sung through a megaphone from underneath the piano. Hardwick-Allan’s first touch of a key on the grand piano then became the performance’s last.
1. Olivia Albanell: ‘Fat wasp with a wooden parcel’ (2024) (dusting wheel, cable tie trimmings, paper, wood) & ‘Teether’ (2024) (plastic, rubber, paper),
2. Fan Bangyu: ‘soft dark’ (2024) (copper mesh, leather, polymer, brass horn),
3. Hayett Belarbi-Mccarthy: ‘Dear Obsolescence’ (2024) (antique silk),
4. Ellis Berwick: ‘Piammer’ (2024) (piano hammers, spring, bolt, metal) & ‘Electreight’ (2024) (bell casing, nut, metal),
5. Zoe de Caluwé: ‘The Song of a Bullfrog’ (2024) (ceramic),
6. Patrick Cole: ‘masking tape pipe (mud larking)’ (2024) (masking tape),
7. Verity Coward: ‘Wodge’ (2024) (paper, rubber),
8. Mandeep Dillon: ‘Hand’ (2024) (silicone),
9. Natalya Marconini Falconer: ‘Between Debris and Thing’ (2024) (aluminium fennel husk),
10. Alia Hamaoui: ‘peachskin velvet I’ (2024) & ‘peachskin velvet II’ (2024),
11. Ellen Poppy Hill: ‘Bell bound’ (2024) (felt, thread, clasp, metal, bell) & ‘Bound bell’ (2024) (tape, thread, wood, string, bell)
12. Joseph Bradley Hill: ‘Roller (With Hidden Paolozzi)’ (2025) (found roller, sticker, Eduardo Paolozzi plastercast),
13. n/a,
14. Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban: ‘I never held emotion in the palm of my hand’ (2024) (found keys & keyrings),
15. Pheobe riley Law: ‘shape placing’ (2024) (steel, rubber, paper),
16. Vita Lerche: ‘Piano Bell’ (2024) (zinc, wood, metal, washers),
17. Joe Moss: ‘Loot Box’ (2024) (3D print, stickers, resin, motor, LED),
18. Eleni Papazoglou: ‘A start a pause’ (2024) (etched stainless steel, stickers, tape),
19. Alexandra Phillips: ‘REACH’ (2025) (extra soft toothbrushes, wood),
20. Gillies Adamson Semple: ‘Bells’ (2025) (antique bells),
21. Thirza Smith: ‘Chorus Line’ (2024) (LED lights, tape),
22. Dominic Watson: ‘David Bowie (Market Square, Aylesbury)’ (2025) (pewter)
Artist, Musician, Designer
a.k.a / part of
Late Works, plates (x5), one-four, Nothing Doing
