Sound, Collaboration & Performance: Sonia Boyce

Phil Lynott Rocks is a digital and audio work by Sonia Boyce OBE RA (b. 1962, London), reanimating the legacy of Phil Lynott, the Black frontman of the Irish rock band Thin Lizzy. The work is part of Boyce’s wider practice across installation, sound, photography and performance. It was presented as part of Slipstream, an internet project that placed artists’ interventions within the everyday flow of the World Wide Web.

The work explores questions of race, memory, identity and visibility within online space. Its playful disruption of the digital environment connects with Boyce’s The Audition (1997) and Do You Want to Touch? (1996–97), which also examine the presence and representation of the Black body. Phil Lynott Rocks extends these ideas into the emerging space of the internet.

Like other works in Slipstream, Phil Lynott Rocks acts as an unexpected intervention within online activity. Through humour, collaboration and digital experimentation, Boyce encourages viewers to reconsider cultural memory and representation. The work asks whose histories are heard, remembered and made visible, particularly within music and popular culture.