Alannah Currie
Alannah Joy Currie (born 20 September 1957, in Auckland, New Zealand) is a New Zealand artist based in London. She is a musician and activist, best known as a former member of the 80s UK pop group Thompson Twins.
Career
Born in New Zealand and trained as a journalist, Currie emigrated to the UK in 1977. Currie squatted in South London. She formed a band The Un*bles that performed a single gig.
In 1981, Currie joined Tom Bailey, Joe Leeway, and others to form part of the Thompson Twins, the line-up of which included up to seven members in its early days. The Thompson Twins became a trio in 1982 and signed two major record contracts with Arista Records before signing with Warner Bros. Records. Currie was a lyricist, percussionist, visual stylist, and singer in the band for 15 years.
She co-wrote and recorded 6 albums which included gold and platinum records and the hits "Doctor! Doctor!", "Hold Me Now", and "You Take Me Up". The band performed at the JFK Stadium, Philadelphia for the 1985 Live Aid concert and worked with artists including Nile Rodgers, Madonna, Grace Jones, Alex Sadkin and Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads amongst others.
In 1984 the band participated in the "first international satellite installation" by Nam June Paik, Good Morning, Mr. Orwell.
Her songwriting credits also include "I Want That Man", an international hit for Deborah Harry in 1989.
By 1992, Currie and her then husband, fellow Thompson Twins band member Tom Bailey, elected to form Babble, featuring Currie as lyricist, percussionist and visual artist, as a means of creating music without the commercial expectations that were placed on the Thompson Twins. In 1994 Babble released their first album. Currie later returned to New Zealand working primarily as a gl* artist and environmental activist. She was the founder of the women's anti-genetic engineering movement Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment (MAdGE). In 2003 she designed a series of protest billboards that caused controversy in New Zealand and won several international art/science awards.
In 2004 she returned to London where she works under the name Miss Pokeno and makes art that fuses ″joyful dissent″ with disruptive/uncomfortable narratives. Her practice plays on the boundary between the humorous and threatening, as with the (semi-) mythological militant feminists The Sisters of Perpetual Resistance and the Armchair Destructivists.
She has a studio in London called Doyce Street Studios Projects.
References
External links
- The Guardian interview (April 2008)
- Investigate.com
- Songwriting credits @ Allmusic.com
- Miss Pokeno