Commissioned by Alex Wilson, Ewan Campbell, and the Dr K Sextet, for the Pierrot Studio, with support from the Golsoncott Foundation and the Britten-Pears Foundation.

Face Painting is a collaborative creative response to Albert Schönberg’s seminal song cycle, Pierrot Lunaire. Taking the absurdist nature of the text as a point of departure, visual artist Jörg Obergfell and Stef Conner developed a framework in which a slowly developing musical impression of laughter emanates from masked musicians, whose appearances evoke archetypal ‘Pierrot’ characters, drawing inspiration from both folk costumes and modernist aesthetics.

Face Painting was premiered by the Dr K Sextet at the Display Gallery, London, Feb. 2016. It was recorded and played as part of the Pierrot Studio exhibition in the same space.