Kaiser Chiefs go Pop Art as they launch exhibition at York Art Gallery

Using their position as pop musicians as a starting point, the chart-topping Leeds band have co-curated an experimental exhibition, the first of its kind.

“We are not artists, we are musicians, and so we’ve chosen to use this opportunity to work with the gallery to explore sound as a medium – our medium – and to open that up further for us and for the viewer/listener,” said the Kaisers en masse. “To stretch ourselves, to explore the edges between music and art, creation and performance.”

Band members Simon Rix, Vijay Mistry, Nick “Peanut” Baines and Andrew White attended Thursday’s launch but singer Ricky Wilson was absent through illness, although plans are afoot for Wilson to “do something” in January. Watch this space.

Lauren Masterman, York Art Gallery’s marketing and press co-ordinator, in the Kaiser Chiefs Take Over York Art Gallery’s Collection room

Working in tandem with York Art Gallery staff, Kaiser Chiefs have created an exhibition with three interlinking elements. Firstly, they have brought together works by internationally regarded sound artists Janet Cardiff, Mark Leckey and 2012 Turner Prize-winning Elizabeth Price, who have inspired The Kaisers to look at sound in new ways.

The main gallery space has been given over to Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet, which allows you to walk through an oval of speakers to hear a reworking of Thomas Tallis’s Elizabethan work Spem In Alium Nunquam Habui, from the singers’ perspective, as witnessed through 40 individual speakers, one for each voice from the Salisbury Cathedral Choir in 2001 The band selected Cardiff’s sound installation on account of its relevance to how they hear their own music while performing: “an all-encompassing space of sound”, as they put it.

Secondly, in the Kaiser Chiefs Take Over York Art Gallery’s Collection room, the Kaisers have chosen 11 artworks from York Art Gallery’s collections, spanning 1798 to 2013, from LS Lowry and John Hoyland to Jack Butler Yeats and Bridget Riley, and an accompanying Set List song to be heard on a headset while looking at the picture.

Along with the likes of The Kinks, Kavinsky, Mercury Rev and Super Furry Animals is the 2011 Kaiser Chiefs song that gave the exhibition its title, When All Is Quiet, here bonded with Leeds artist Rebecca Apleby’s Sketch For The Disrupted Expectation.

Listening in: Kaiser Chiefs’ Simon Rix (left) and Vijay Mistry (right) experience Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet sound installation

Thirdly, the band have commissioned a new installation, Silent Gig, that uses light and colour and projected lyrics from the Set List songs to create an immersive environment to offer visitors a reconfigured experience of a live music show, without sound.

Take a bow, Kaiser Chiefs’ lighting designer Rob Sinclair, who also worked his magic on David Byrne’s American Utopia Tour show, as seen at Leeds First Direct Arena on October 21. Utilising 73 lights and two tons of equipment, it took two days to build and three days to light, but its silence will certainly be a conversation piece.

“The feeling of euphoria at a gig can come just as much from the production as the song,” says Simon.

Look out for a black door – last seen floating in an ocean in the My Life promo – from a series of Kaiser Chiefs pop videos and Sarah Graham’s Kaisers Rock!, the original cover artwork for the Kaisers’ 2012 album, Souvenir, loaned by owner Marc Macintosh Watson after he heard about the York show.

When All Is Quiet is completed by Mark Leckey’s short-film portrayal of British nightlife, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore; fellow Tate loan Elizabeth Price’s video installation The Woolworth Choir Of 1979, featuring Ripon Cathedral’s profane misericords and the deconstructed music of The Shangri-Las’ Out In The Streets; archive material from the collections of pioneering composer Pauline Oliveros, who coined the phrase “deep listening”; and Daytrip Maryanne, a collaboration between sound sculptor Maryanne Amacher and Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore.

Kaiser Chiefs launch their When All Is Quiet exhibition at York Art Gallery

“We were making our new album and this exhibition at the same time and the exhibition won the race by a long stretch,” said bassist Simon Rix at Thursday’s launch.

He and drummer Vijay Mistry have taken the leading roles in putting the exhibition together, although all the band have played a part, participating in project meetings with senior curator Dr Beatrice Bertram, while dynamic Scottish design company Acme Studios were commissioned by the gallery for the exhibition’s marketing, branding and merchandising, such as T-shirts, mugs and posters. “When you come into York Art Gallery, the show’s branding runs throughout the gallery, all taken from the band’s own identity,” says Beatrice.

“We found it difficult trying to talk about the show while it was taking shape, as it was hard to visualise how it would turn out, rather like I can find it difficult to talk about our albums before they’re finished, but it’s come together really well, all the little details,” says Simon.

“We had initially started looking at the gallery’s archives but were overwhelmed by the sheer body of work,” recalls Vijay.

“We thought, if we look through them all, they’re probably won’t be a show until 2030,” recalls Simon.

Instead, they drew up a long list of possibilities for the Kaiser Chiefs Take Over York Art Gallery’s Collection space, finally settling on the 11. “‘Yorkshireness’ and ‘Northernness’ were important to us, as a Yorkshire band, so that’s why we picked out Turner’s Fountains Abbey work and Lowry too, as we wanted to represent northern art,” says Simon.

“I’m most proud of linking Jack Butler Yeats’s That We May Never Meet Again with Mercury Rev’s The Dark Is Rising,” says Vijay. “I had that piece of music in my head when I looked at the painting, but I’d never owned a Mercury Rev record; I just knew the instrumental version; I sang it, but no-one recognised it, but then suddenly I thought, ‘It could be Mercury Rev’...and I found it!”

The Kaisers were particularly keen to give a give a first northern exposure to Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet. “Hearing voices through 40 speakers is an experience you can’t find anywhere else,” says Simon. “You can’t set up 40 speakers in your living room, but we thought it was a really contemporary sound installation that you could place at the heat of a gallery.” Best heard, by the way, when all around is quiet.

l When All Is Quiet: Kaiser Chiefs in Conversation with York Art Gallery, runs until March 10.

Kaiser Chiefs: picking paintings and songs

The Set List

KAISER Chiefs’ “set list” of songs chosen in response to works from York Art Gallery’s collection that reference creation, production or performance.

Bridget Riley’s Study 4 for Painting With Two Verticals, paired with Julia Holter’s Sea Calls Me Home

L S Lowry’s The Bandstand, Peel Park, Salford; The Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society

John Golding’s H.19 (Canticle); The Beach Boys’ Caroline No

Jack Butler Yeats’s That We May Never Meet Again; Mercury Rev’s The Dark Is Rising

Oliver Bevan’s Flickering Grid II; Super Furry Animals’ Pan Ddaw’r Wawr

JMW Turner’s The Dormitory and Transept of Fountains Abbey – Evening; Talking Heads’ Love – Building On Fire

Peter Leonard Donnelly’s Red Plot; Kavinsky’s Nightcall

Malcolm Hughes’s Study No 3; Plastic Bertrand’s Ca Plane Pour Moi

John Hoyland’s Pact; The Cure’s A Forest

Bryan Wynter’s Under Mars; Adam & The Ants’ Prince Charming

Rebecca Appleby’s Sketch For The Disrupted Expectation; Kaiser Chiefs’ When All Is Quiet