Often when musicians make records most people focus solely on the music and rarely give thought to the artistic dimensions of the record’s release. Hundreds of hours of work goes into the production of album covers and artwork, tour posters, album launch advertisements, but it all goes relatively unnoticed and unappreciated.

This is all about to change with Greedy Hen’s first solo art exhibition in Sydney, which sees the release of their fictitious debut album – titled Debut Album. “Visually, the show is predominately art prints. We created an album cover, wrote a track list of ten songs, then created artwork about those ten songs,” Katherine and Kate from Greedy Hen explained. They are both heavily involved in art production within the music industry and so “naturally became curious about what it would look like if we were our own band.” So it’s hardly surprising that the artwork was conceptualised in such an organic and natural way. Even the themes and motifs shared by the songs’ artwork was composed in the same organic way.  Greedy Hen explain, “there are quite a few repetitions in themes – lots of water and white spaces – but all of that came naturally and unintentionally.”

But the exhibition is not simply a stack of CDs each with a booklet of lyrics at the front. “This body of work is collage and print based," GH explain. "All of the artworks are printed onto an archival heavy weight watercolour paper, which we're obsessed with.  Each of the works were created using lots of fragments from everywhere – old books and magazines, watercolours, HB pencils and colouring in.”

This genious concept comes from a type of art known as 'super fiction' – the idea that someone with enthusiasm and a love for a subject could, over a lifetime, make a greater contribution than the jaded professional. Greedy Hen never had the intention of making sound or music for this exhibition: “we leave the void up to the viewer to fill in…neither of us was interested in literally making the music for Greedy Hen the band, we just wanted to represent our fictitious songs visually through art.”

The ambiguity is a deliberate move to allow each individual viewer to form a different interpretation of what the artwork means to them. “You can never know how people will respond, it's a difficult thing to anticipate,” they explain.
This artwork as well as their experimental approach to art has had them labelled ‘visionaries’ by local art critics, a term which they say encompasses most artists – not just what they do.

But even after the predicted success of this exhibition, Greedy Hen say they’re still going try new and different types of mediums. “It’s the most exciting thing, not being restricted or pigeon holed by a particular medium,” they say. “That’s how we like to roll. We get worried that we won’t be able to do all the things we want to do within our life time. So we just keep on keeping on!”

What: Greedy Hen's Debut Album

Where: Chalkhorse Gallery, 8 Lacey St, Surry Hills

When:Opens 6pm Thursday 29 September