Simon and Angie Lewin, of St Jude's, have many strings to their bow – the latest is an audio visual edition of their print publication Random Spectacular, celebrating an Edinburgh sound installation…
What’s the background – how and why did the Random Spectacular project come about?
Random Spectacular is essentially the result of a long walk in the wilds of Scotland in 2011. Angie and I had thought about producing a printed journal alongside our St Jude’s fabric design and gallery activities. We had a shared interest in publications such as Jake Tilson’s Atlas series, Motif and The Saturday Books.
We were spending a weekend with our friends and collaborators Mark Hearld and Emily Sutton and by the Sunday night we had a come up with a name and made a commitment to create our first printed journal.
In 2014 we published the second multi–contributor issue, but I’d always thought that Random Spectacular could give us the opportunity to produce single–subject projects and publications in a variety of formats – but all sequentially numbered (in a shameless reference to the output of Factory Records).
I’d met Rob St. John and Tommy Perman whilst working on Random Spectacular No. 2 – the duo contributed a article based on their recent Water of Life project. Last year saw the launch of their latest collaboration (along with Simon Kirby) called Concrete Antenna, a sound installation in the twenty–eight–metre–high landmark tower at the new Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. I’d visited the installation and once I’d heard of the trio’s desire to develop this as a vinyl and print project I knew it would fit perfectly with what we had planned for Random Spectacular.