Joy Allison
Joy Allison has recently emerged as one of the Pear Resident Practitioner Program's most accomplished undergraduates. Mixing songs of praise with contemporary issues such as consumerism, Allison has taken religious art beyond the traditional imagery of her predecessor, . Making her Pear Art Fair debut in 2023, Allison created a remarkably sophisticated soundscape which spanned the length and breadth of the grounds of the fair. Taking as a starting point a cappella material she had recently recorded for the purpose of her Songs of Joy release on Pear Trax, Allison set about adding to, subtracting from, splicing and re-editing such sound with a view to playing it through PearSpeakers® dotted strategically around the fair.
Allison's work is given its first thorough appraisal by Ricardo Powell in the volume Religious Art at a Crossroads which is reviewed here by Kelvin Cooper and available to buy at PearBooks.