Malka Spigel

Malka Spigel (Hebrew: מלכה שפיגל; born 19 July 1954) fell into the music and art world as a Tel Aviv exile in early 1980s Amsterdam (the Netherlands). In 1980 or 1981 she co-founded Minimal Compact with Berry Sakharof and Samy Birnbach; they were later joined by Rami Fortis and Max Franken. In the band she played bass and contributed occasional vocals.

Moving to Brussels (Belgium), home to the band's Crammed label, she met and married Wire's Colin Newman in 1986, having collaborated on his solo albums Commercial Suicide and It Seems. The couple moved to London in 1992, setting up the Swim label, initially to release their own projects (Immersion, Oracle and Malka's debut Rosh Balata), but later to release the work of other artists, and new projects (e.g. Githead).

In 1996, Immersion made an installation at IMMA Dublin, which set Malka on a path of realising herself as a visual artist in addition to being a musician. Between 2000 and 2002 she studied and gained a degree in fine art, specialising in video and photography. She has since made video work with Immersion (most famously seen at the Royal Festival Hall, London) and video clips for Vapourspace and Minimal Compact. She also has an extensive collection of photography work, primarily created with a lomo LCA camera, which has gained her pre-eminence in the lomo community.