ARTISTS TALKING

However, everything I make is built around a spine of drawing. The method that I use results in a large output of quick, cognitive drawings, made with black gouache paint on white paper. The drawings are made spontaneously; they depict scenes dredged up randomly from a mental backlog of scenarios I have read, seen or heard about. A man's head with the words Kill Frank next to it reveals itself as the momentary psychotic interruption when Roy Evans tried to run down Frank Butcher in East Enders. The drawings sometimes find other forms – gaining an extended life – usually made out of wood. At times these objects are produced as spontaneously as the drawings, using a jigsaw and plywood; at other times they are planned and laboriously constructed in marketry – the introduction of craft that embellishes the banality of the drawn tableaux.

Alongside my own practice, I make work and curate shows with the artist Graham Parker, under the collaborative name of Bono & Sting. It's a work marked by our investigations of a shared tone that isn't always to the fore in our solo practice. Intentionally trivial and ridiculous, it is however an area of our work we consider no more or less rigorous than any other – producing ideas which either of us may develop more fully. Bono (Graham Parker) and Sting (myself) have curated exhibitions as well as presenting our own collaborative works at From Space gallery in Salford, for over a year.

With Martin Vincent and Richard Hylton, I'm a member of the art rock band Die Kunst. A typical power trio of bass guitar and drums, we only present projects in art galleries: a soundtrack to a long-lost silent movie or nineteen quick songs about the world. I have been curating events with visual artists who utilise music since 1996. The culmination of this activity was 'My Eye Hurts' in 1999, a one-day event curated with Work and Leisure International, that presented artists in bands and artists making audio work, in Manchester and New York. This month I will be going on a research trip to Paris with a view to repeating the project there later in the year.

Parallel to my studio practice, I find working with other artists a productive and informative process. The networks and contacts I have established over the eleven years that I have lived and worked in Manchester are part of a progressive ethos shared with many artists in the city that help to establish and build upon its artistic infrastructure.