Andrew Stones

Andrew Stones is a British video, sound and mixed-media artist. His work is rooted in the close observation of nature, and informed by critiques of human overreach.

Stones’s audio work shares features with musique concrète, electro-acoustic composition, classical minimalism, and various folk forms. His compositions follow the natural playing-out of physical phenomena in time, and the musicality of all kinds of materials in motion, often matching a singular image or idea (a wave, a helicopter, the traverse of an interior or a terrain) with a structural rule (to use only metal objects, or a particular set of numbers).

Stones collects sound-making devices and field recordings, and makes instruments. He has developed a working method that combines the physical and the digital, expressive and mechanically-actuated playing, the musically-familiar (piano, harmonium, struck/bowed strings) and the strange (feathers, machines, voices from history).

Associated with the European video art scene in the 1980s, Stones gravitated towards mixed-media installation, often using multi-channel audio. He exhibits solo, and in the partnership Frances Hegarty & Andrew Stones. He has also collaborated with artists Stefan Gec and Louise K. Wilson (on audio and other works), and with pianist Joanna MacGregor (on a touring concert with graphic projections).

Stones’s audio work is released on the Salmon Songs label, alongside the music of his alter-ego Mister Salmon.