If you’re someone as legendary as the poster boy of goth rock Nick Cave, how do you even begin to make sense of a career and oeuvre that spans nearly 40 years and countless accolades?
That’s a question Cave himself grappled with, when Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Library first reached out to him to broach the idea of an exhibition. “I am not nostalgic by nature and I had no time for a trip down memory lane,” says Cave.
The library’s team eventually won the musician over with their tenacity and the result is an extensive new exhibition titled Stranger Than Kindness, which has just opened recently at the Black Diamond, the Royal Danish Library’s cultural space and will run from now till Feb 13 next year.
If you’re not familiar with Cave, he’s best known as the frontman of the Australian experimental rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Cave himself is distinguished by the poetic, often melancholic touch he brings to his performances, lyrics as well as his own personal image.
He has also ties to the fashion world – his wife and former model Susie Cave is the founder behind the popular label The Vampire’s Wife. Cave himself is also a close personal friend to Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele – and small wonder; Cave’s stately yet sepulchral aura has earned him (unfairly or not) the reputation as the genre’s prince of darkness, fitting perfectly with Michele’s enthusiastic embrace of eclectic personalities who might have once been considered outliers. It makes sense that Gucci, as well as non-profit Danish foundation Beckett-Fonden, are the main sponsors for this exhibition.
Above, we take a look at what you can expect from the exhibition.
