A different side to one of the giants of 20th-century music will go on show this November, thanks to hcmf// and Huddersfield Art Gallery. Every Day Is A Good Day: An Exhibition of John Cage’s Artworks is the first major retrospective in this country of visual art by Cage, who died in 1992. The touring exhibition from London’s Hayward Gallery opens at the BALTIC centre in June and will run at Huddersfield Art Gallery from 20 November until 9 January 2011.

Conceived by artist Jeremy Millar, Every Day Is A Good Day features around 200 works by Cage, who took up painting whilst staying in Europe after dropping out of college, but abandoned it in favour of dedicating himself to composition. He returned to art later in life, producing drawings, watercolours and prints, many of which were inspired by the same chance-based techniques for which his music became renowned.

In keeping with this philosophy, the display positions and groupings of the pictures in the exhibition will be determined using a computer programme based upon the Chinese I-Ching system of chance-based divination which Cage used as a composition aid from the 1950s onwards. John Cage was a guest at hcmf// in 1989 and the festival has long recognised his contribution to contemporary music, most recently at hcmf// 2008 with John Cage Reclaimed, a retrospective of his controversial 1958 New York Town Hall concert.

Named after the translation of a Japanese Zen Buddhist proverb favoured by Cage, Every Day Is A Good Day runs alongside hcmf// 2010 (Friday 19 November to Sunday 28 November) and will be complemented by several performances of Cage works, details of which will be announced soon.

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