Standard Ballad (2015)* presents footage of the closing ceremony of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, with its central protagonist, their official mascot, Misha.** The smiling inflated cartoon bear is brought into the stadium to bid farewell before ascending into the night’s sky aided by multi-coloured balloons. The crowds’ rapturous applause and anthem of ‘Farewell Moscow’ are substituted by a slowed down and pared back version of American singer/songwriter Norah Jones’ song ‘Sunrise,’ with a haunting chorus of “Hoo, ooh, ooh, ooh, Hoo, ooh, ooh, ooh, Hoo, ooh, ooh, ooh, To you.”

For Bishop songs are always carriers of feeling. Here the title of work resonates, ‘standard ballad.’ He brings us to moments in the past, of nostalgia and being together, conjuring feelings of joy, sadness and hope, while a smiling bear rises up into the sky.

* The work was first presented as part of his solo exhibition of the same name at Carlos/Ishikawa, London. The installation took the form of a multitude of previously occupied beds, complete with bedside tables, lights and radios and a singular shelf packed with shoe-boxes full of momentos. Echoes of childhood bedrooms multiplied in the installation, where at specific intervals the film’s soundtrack would spark the same song to play on each of the radios creating a chorus of song.

** Designed by the children’s illustrator Viktor Chizhikov.

Standard Ballad (2015)
Single channel video
5′ 10″ HD video

Video courtesy of the artist and Carlos/Ishikawa Gallery.

Steve Bishop (born 1983 in Toronto, CA) lives in London. He has recently realized solo exhibitions at Galeria Jacqueline Martins, São Paulo (2020), Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig (2019), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2018), Supportico Lopez with 6817, Los Angeles (2016), and Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2015/2013).

Image: Steve Bishop, Standard Ballad (2015) film still. Single channel video. 5′ 10″ HD video. Video courtesy of the artist and Carlos/Ishikawa Gallery.