Talk by Charlie Hooker 7.30 pm at the Sussex Arts Club, Brighton.

Charlie Hooker is an internationally exhibited artist and also the Subject Leader for Fine Art Sculpture at the University of Brighton. Since the mid-1970's, he has made work which deliberately traverses recognised categories within the arts, including fusions of dance, music and theatre as well as sculpture and image-making. Charlie presented an overview of his work during the last 30 years, in a talk entitled Making Tracks, which corresponds with the first stage in a project aimed to link aspects of meteorological research to art and music. To do this, Charlie is currently working within Reading University's Departments of Meteorology, Music and Fine Art, to generate links between Reading and Brighton University and develop an exhibition of images, audio-visual sculptures and a large-scale audio installation derived from global weather patterns.

During the 1970's and 1980's he undertook numerous site-specific performances and installations in Britain, Europe, America and Australia. During the 1990's, up to the present, his work has been concerned with the creation of indoor and outdoor sculptural installations which envelop, or relate directly to the viewer and combine sound and movement within visual structures.

Charlie's work often incorporates natural elements such as wind, water and sunshine to generate audible and visual movement. Recent examples of these are as follows:

1992 - Separate Elements, North Sea, St Andrews Bay.

1993 - Wave Wall 2 (Arts Council Collection), Festival Hall, London; and The Chase, `s-Hertogenbosch, Holland.

1994 - Sun Fountain, Lee Valley Leisure Centre.

1996 - Sounding Party, Kielder Water, Northumberland.

1998 - Twins, Churchill Square, Brighton (Standard Life Insurance commission); and The Lightning Panel, Science Museum London (permanent collection).

1999 - Sensitive Dependence, Economist Plaza, London.

2002/3 - Local Stars, sound & light sculpture commission, Tower Hamlets, London.

His sculptures normally incorporate traditional materials such as granite and bronze with specially-designed electronics to generate light and sound. Currently, this involves the fabrication of glass, stone and metal panels (up to architectural floor and wall-size) which resonate, without the use of loudspeakers, to produce sound. The sounds range from the spoken word to percussion and orchestral music, written and digitally recorded by Charlie.