Lynch and Sound

Earlier this y ear one of the world’s true ex:centrics, David Lynch, was showcased in a major exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. The show, brilliantly curated by Jose da Silva, presented the largest collection of his artworks ever assembled in one place and a complete retrospective of his work for the screen. Given the brief of ex:centrics, Lynch of course cuts an interesting figure, because whilst he is in many ways the very embodiment of an ex:centric, the kind of canonisation that a major international show like this signals throws the whole idea of centre and margins into a state of flux. If previously, especially in musical circles, this kind of recognition may have been figured as indicative of an artist “selling out”, my suspicion is that phenomena such as this speak more now to the ways in which the culture industry is changing.

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