Television Advertisement, SNAP, Aldeburgh Festival, 2013

King was commissioned to create a billboard for SNAP at Aldeburgh Festival. In 2013, the festival was dedicated entirely to once-locally based composer, Benjamin Britten. King’s idea was to be true to the purpose of billboard hoardings and create an advertisement of sorts: combining the ‘low culture’ of advertising, with the ‘high culture’ of a string quartet.

Many years previously, Britten’s Playful Pizzicato had been used for a Royal Bank of Scotland television ad, so this became the template for Kings own Television Advertisement. Once every fifteen minutes, throughout the festival, the quartet would play the same thirty second section of Playful Pizzicato, just as it had appeared in the original advert. This work coincided with the Royal Bank of Scotland being fined £390 million for their part in the Libor scandal.

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Curators: Abigail Lane and Sarah Lucas
Photography: Jason Manning

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