The longtime creative force for the Gorillaz’s live shows embarks on his own mythic underworld at Frieze LA. Gallagher sat down in conversation with Shaquille Heath.
There was a time when concerts were simply musicians, their instruments, and a crowd eager to be carried away by melody. Today, while music remains central, the experience has expanded. Think about the last show you attended. You weren’t just moved by the songs. You were immersed in stage design, lighting, moving images and worlds unfolding behind the performers. Rivers of projected water rippling in time with a beat. Entire universes built in real time. That kind of invisible, yet essential, world-building is the work of Stephen Thomas Gallagher.
Best known as co-founder of artist duo Block9, Gallagher has spent decades constructing immersive environments that blur art, music, theatre, and politics. His practice extends to his role as creative director for live shows by bands like Gorillaz and Blur, translating their sound into fully realised visual worlds. For years, Gallagher has shaped other artists’ visions into unforgettable experiences. Now, he is stepping forward with a vision entirely his own.
Sunset: The Jubilation of The Baboons, presented by The Pit as a one-night only screening on February 24 during Frieze LA, marks Gallagher’s first public solo work and international debut. It coincides with the release of The Mountain, the Gorillaz’s ninth album performed to sold-out audiences at the LA Palladium, and the launch of House of Kong, an immersive exhibition celebrating 25 years of the band, conceived by Gallagher and on view at Rolling Greens DLTA from February 26 to March 18, 2026.
At The Pit, Gallagher’s Sunset features aerial footage of Los Angeles’ shipping port, layered with shifting colour fields. Beneath its industrial surface lies something more ancient–the work draws inspiration from The Amduat, an ancient Egyptian funerary text tracing the Sun God’s twelve-hour journey through the underworld, from dusk to rebirth. Gallagher reimagines that descent for the present day, taking us on a trip through his own mythic waters. Gallagher’s hope for the film is that viewers reconsider the energy we invest in connection. That their own voyage through Sunset becomes a meditation on what truly binds us. As he puts it: “If we were able to pour the same amount of energy into art and connections with people as we do into capitalism, then the world ultimately would be a better place.”
Shaquille Heath: You’ve shaped the visual worlds of some incredible bands, like Gorillaz and Blur. What made this the right moment to step forward with your own art practice and a solo exhibition?
Stephen Thomas Gallagher: I’ve been making work since art college, probably even before that. I was always interested in making things. After doing a painting-focused degree, I ended up going into theatre. I was making backdrops, building scenery, painting sets, making props. I moved from a very traditional art-world path into this other world.
Quite early on, I met another guy, Gideon, and we set up a studio called Block9 for us to be able to make our own work. That work was happening and informed by the other stuff that we were doing, so they were these installations that were kind of parties and artworks that you could interact with, always with a sort of narrative component––whether that narrative component was responding to a particular genre of music or something.
We were making work like that through Block9 (and still do!) for example down at Glastonbury Festival where we do a lot of work. We’ve worked with Banksy and all kinds of different people, building different large-scale environments. Alongside the Gorillaz and band stuff, I’ve always been doing that. So it feels like a shift, and it is a shift to some extent, but actually it’s kind of a natural progression as well.
Even within that context, it must feel so different when you’re not translating from someone else’s voice and art. When you’re creating from inside your own mind.
Yes, that’s true! A lot of those projects are very collaborative. The world of Gorillaz, for example, is sprawling. There are loads and loads of opportunities to be super creative, but you’re still working within a framework. The Hours feels like a snapshot, or a portrait, of the world that I find myself in. I find it quite difficult to explain in words what it feels like to be in this world, but by making art, I’m trying to share ideas. Making art is a funny thing, because on one hand, you’re sharing ideas in a way that you are hoping and expecting people to be able to understand. You’re trying to communicate. But on the other hand, you have no control over what people take from something. So it’s this kind of duality, which actually is at the heart of the project.
The world needs balance. A world which is highly polished and presented as perfect is not real, and it’s not how the world sits in balance. The world needs light and shade. It needs beauty and horror to be balanced.
You’re totally right. So, how do you honour the imperfect and find a voice that feels distinctly yours?
It’s about trying to find a language in which to communicate. When you come into contact with Sunset or anything else from The Hours, this feels like it’s above me. It’s my voice. This is basically how I communicate with the world in the most direct way that I’m able to. Everything else is me trying to find words to explain something.
A lot of the stuff that I do is collaborative, and the productions are often quite large scale. So you have to find a way of communicating that other people will be able to understand. That’s why there’s always a semi-narrative component that runs through most of the work that I make. It has a sense of a story to it. In The Hours, that story on one hand is somewhat a translation for today of this ancient story of the journey that the sun god takes from sunset, when the sun goes down, through the night to being reborn the next day. That’s the narrative thread that runs through The Hours. But it’s a very unusual and contemporary retelling of that journey.
I was really struck by hypnagogia–the state between waking and sleep. I didn’t even realise there was a word for that!
Yeah! In the original myth, the sun god travels through the netherworld and encounters different realms, which are basically different parts of the human psyche. While researching this, I was also reading about the state of the mind through a 24-hour cycle—including all the hours of the night. The idea that you transition through different states of consciousness during the night in the same way as you do during the day. In the daytime, sometimes you’re really awake and alert. Other times, you might be daydreaming. So there are different versions of what consciousness is, rather than just thinking you’re awake or asleep. In the journey through the night, you have the same variation in consciousness. There are periods in the night when you come closer to the surface of being awake. Hypnagogia is the period as you drift into sleep. Hypnopompia is the period at the end of sleep.
I was reading a book called The Head Trip by Jeff Warren. He explores the pattern of sleep that occurs as you drift into sleep from closing your eyes. I used a technique (lots of people have used it) where you sit in a chair with a metal plate on the floor and a set of keys in your hand. You hold the keys loosely above the plate. As you fall asleep, your body relaxes, the keys drop, hit the plate, and wake you up. Then you capture the thoughts you were having. I did that eight or ten times. The whole concept for the film… I knew it was going to be about falling asleep. But I used the process of falling asleep to make it.
That’s so interesting! I feel like that would be really tough…
You have to sort of train yourself to do it.
The imagery and sounds in the film include the port of LA, heavy machinery, crashing waves, screeching baboons. How did you choose those elements?
They all take the central thread from The Amduat, [an ancient Egyptian funerary text] and reimagine it for today. In the original story, the Sun God travels in a solar barque. You know that long boat that curls up at the ends. In my version, that vessel becomes a shipping container. We travel across oceans following shipping routes. In the original text, baboons herald the Sun God’s journey into the netherworld. So, in my version, baboons herald the start of our journey. It’s natural history footage.
There’s this idea that if you spend time in nature in your waking life, then you dream about nature. You connect more closely to your animal self in your dreaming, and ultimately you get closer to the idea of the collective unconscious. The Hours has this idea that the collective unconscious, present within the dream world, is a connection to all other human beings who have ever lived and ever will live.
The connections between those people are represented by the shipping routes. The global supply chain is a thread that connects us with other human beings in that supply chain. When you order a new TV on a Sunday afternoon and it gets delivered on Monday afternoon, there’s a whole thread of people connected together via this global supply chain. If we were able to pour the same amount of energy into art and connections with people as we do into capitalism, then the world ultimately would be a better place.
I think that’s really beautiful… And just to clarify — baboons, not gorillas?
Haha, yes, baboons, not gorillas. It’s absolutely not deliberate. It’s just a happy crossover with my other existence.
