ross a. waterman: nick cave: shot live 2007-2017 signs of love
03.12.22-14.01.23
Ross A. Waterman : Signs of Love
At a Grinderman Show 2017
‘I love you’
Nick replied, ‘Thank-you’ The woman responded, ‘Do you love me?’
Nick hesitated then answered, ‘ I don’t even know you’
The woman returned, with son anguish in her voice, ‘But l love you’
The band were smiling, and the audience was listening.
Nick looked at the band, smiled back and then admitted, ‘Oh, l love you to, then’.
Everyone was happy, and possibly at that very moment, Nick learnt to love that unknown fan and perhaps every unknown fan that inhabits his world.
SIGNS OF LOVE
Signs of Love is three installations of photographs, consisting of 104 parts, shot live across 10 years.
The first installation spans from Nick Cave Solo/Grinderman in 2007 to Nick Cave in Concert in 2014. The second installation is the 2017 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree tour from Hobart to Melbourne, and the third picks up the tour in New York, in June 2017, and leaves it in Vancouver.
These installations are a form of expressionism that reflect Cave’s ever-powerful, emotive songs, music, and performances. The Signs of Love series deal with time, passage, atmosphere, mood, energy, light and its desired absence, and the shifting nature of Cave’s relationship with his audiences.
From 2007, Cave underwent a gradual metamorphosis from a performer who dramatically inhabited a stage and prowled the confines of it, confronting those who needed to stand near or against it. Cave used these fans as props, he pointed at them, confessed to them, sang to them, yelled at them, and protected them. Then Cave started to reach out to them, to hold their hands, as they held his hand.
The change in this relationship with his audience can be seen when contrasting Held Aloft 2013 (from Signs of Love 1) where Cave entered the audience to be held above them, to The Believers 2017 (from Signs of Love 3) where Cave entered the audience to be with them. Both are wonderful but different.
During the Skeleton Tree tour of North America, Cave began to invite his audience onto the stage, the inner sanctum, to sing with him, to dance with him, to encircle him, then to sit, while he left the stage and moved into theatres of adoring fans. To be with them in their room, to trust them, to show faith in them, to touch them gently, to sing with them, to scream at them, to be surrounded by them, to have them experience his manifestation, to attest and profess his love to them, his amazed unknown fans.
Those fans in turn reached out to him, they pointed back, they recorded and expressed their awe and their joy, and they laid their hands upon him. They become a part of it all, and their signs of love and devotion abounded. They were no longer viewers of the show, they were the show. They were with him.
Nick Cave’s despair, his hope, his faith, and his signs of love were realised, they had found a home.
