THE GHOSTS OF NOTHING – IN MEMORY OF JONNY B. GOODE is the first full-scale public realisation of an experimental, radically open-ended project developed nationally and internationally over a four-year period.

Combining visual art, music, performance and multi-media installation, IN MEMORY OF JOHNNY B. GOODE creates a dark, slippery, tragicomic fictional world that is simultaneously bizarre, desperately sad and playful.

The project fuses two fictional characters – the rock-star figure Johnny B. Goode with the nineteenth century tragic clown known as Pierrot – to create the central character of “Johnny”.  A dark narrative, elaborated across time and space unfolds.

Blurring the lines between the real and the imagined, the project has resulted in a radio play, a “rock opera” by a fictional rock band, and an associated “world tour” – with twelve performances at sites worldwide from 2014 to 2017. Presented in three acts, this “world tour” included the World Tour of Abandoned Music Venues 2014 – 2015, World Tour of Remote Wildernesses 2015 – 2016 and World Tour of Abandoned Gaol-Houses 2016 – 2017.

On opening night, the thirteenth and grand finale performance featuring Zackari Watt and Laura Purcell will take place in the Yard of The Lock-Up, bringing the work to its epic conclusion.

Taking its curatorial cue as that of a “rock tour” retrospective museum exhibition, THE GHOSTS OF NOTHING – IN MEMORY OF JOHNNY B. GOODE is the final culmination of the project’s multi-year trajectory, presenting the rich universe of the project including video documentation of the performances, material artefacts, images, texts and “tour” memorabilia.

Produced and curated by The Ghosts of Nothing (aka Sean Lowry and Ilmar Taimre) with artistic collaborators including Lee Devaney, Charles Famous, Coleman Grehan, Lyndall Johnston, Frank J. Miles, Laura Purcell, Mark Titmarsh, Zoë Tuffin and Zackari Watt.

ABOUT DR. SEAN LOWRY
Sean Lowry is a Melbourne-based artist, musician and writer. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the University of Sydney and is currently Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies in Art at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Lowry has exhibited and performed extensively both nationally and internationally, and his published writing appears in numerous journals and edited volumes. His conceptually driven practice employs strategies of concealment, subliminal quotation, erasure, remediation and intermedial expansion to explore the outermost limits of the world of a work of art. He is also Founder and Executive Director of Project Anywhere (www.projectanywhere.net), and one half (with Ilmar Taimre) of The Ghosts of Nothing (www.ghostsofnothing.com).

ABOUT DR. ILMAR TAIMRE
Ilmar Taimre is a Brisbane-based artist, musician and composer. He has recently completed a PhD in Music at the University of Newcastle. His thesis is titled “An Interpretive Model for Conceptual Music.’ Taimre has been a performing musician in Australia and New Zealand, and has released a number of recordings with virtual band Man from Atlanta (a collaboration with Allan Innes-Walker) (www.manfromatlanta.com). He is one half of The Ghosts of Nothing (with Sean Lowry). He is a member of the Editorial Board for Project Anywhere (see above). Taimre has exhibited a number of intermedial works informed by his concerns with post-conceptual currents in contemporary art.