I became a fan of the band, the first album I ever possessed was their Hunting High And Low album, even though nowadays the A-ha fan community hails the little known Scoundrel Days as their best album.

Nevertheless, I share my taste with Coldplay, and Chris Martin, who recently performed their own cover of the classic love song Hunting High And Low live on stage in Oslo with Magne Furuholmen of A-ha.

There is footage of this on Coldplay's site here: http://www.coldplay.com/newsdetail.php?id=133

For years I thought A-ha had disappeared from the music scene, and all UK radio stations had wrongly pigeonholed the band as a "1980s synth pop" band. Yet I still had Hunting High And Low, and whenever I put it on, it always sounded amazing, one of my favourite tracks being Living A Boy's Adventure Tale.

The 80s otherwise was a scary place full of freaky men with make up on - Boy George, Adam Ant etc, and freakish teenagers emulating them badly - the sight of older teenagers wearing skin tight stonewash jeans and weeing in the tunnels at the park made me never want to grow up!

The vision of Zammo slumped by the lockers and the Grange Hill Just Say No campaign burnt it's image into my brain and ensured that I would never take drugs ever.

By the time I had to go through puberty, the early 90s was awash with shell suits, Doc Martins and Techotronic, and all our childhood memories were transformed into rave scene drug industry fodder, which was probably more scary to young children than my sister's horrible visions of looking up at someone in skintight stonewash jeans from her pushchair ever was! The fashion industry still remains largely oblivious to the subliminal effect of its nefarious costumery on young minds.

Fast Forward (that was a magazine I read in the 80s as well) to 2005, when despite being a single parent, I decided to pick up my career where it left off and moved to Lincoln to do my degree in BA (hons) Fine Art and Illustration.

I was taught to do animation, and I accidentally (!) made one in a similar sketchy, rotoscoped style as the Take On Me video! Whoops! Someone told me that A-ha had a new album out. Off I went to A-ha.com to investigate. I found out they were doing gigs in the UK for summer 2006, which happened to coincide with my 30th birthday. So it was that for the first time I got myself front row tickets to see A-ha live in Liverpool for my 30th birthday!!

I also came across a very rare promotional version of the original Take On Me vinyl, which had the comic book images from the video in it. I bought it for "research" purposes, (he he!) and I haven't seen another one since. It is now signed by Pal Waaktaar Savoy, the genius songwriter from A-ha!

The gig was of course a dream come true - Morten looked and sang the same as ever - he doesn't look like he's aged a day, despite now being in his 50s, only spoilt by some evil camera police, who wouldn't let me take photos for no good reason at all.

I also discovered that Magne Furuholmen of the band is also a practising artist, exhibiting his work in their native Norway and London at Paul Stolper gallery.

In 2007 I was offered the chance to collaborate with Magne, when he invited his myspace friends to make dolls of him for his "Scrabble" exhibition, at Sorlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway. So I made two dolls for this purpose and sent them to Norway where they were exhibited with over 100 other dolls made by fans. In return for participating in Magne's exhibition, I received a personally signed thankyou letter, and a limited edition signed CD of the sound part of the installation.

Dolls had featured in my work previously, and they now form a continuing theme within my work as an artist and illustrator. I also drew upon by experiences rediscovering A-ha and all the associated collaborative experience to create an installation for my final degree show, shown as part of the University of Lincoln Fine Art Degree Show back in May 2008, my installation was entitled "The Unreal God And Aspects Of His Non-Existent Universe" and was part of "This Is It 2008". The title was in reference to Philip K Dick, a science fiction author who wrote fictional work that later turned out to be real. My work questions the relationship between the comic book, or imaginary world, and the real world, in that the opportunities that have occurred with A-ha seem unreal. It also draws on theory from Jean Baudrillard.

If anyone is interested in this art installation or any of my other work, go to www.helendblackbird.co.uk/exhibitions.

Meanwhile, Magne and Coldplay have formed a band called Apparatjik, and recorded Ferreting for the theme to Bruce Parry's Amazon, currently showing on Monday evenings BBC2.

A-ha are currently working on their new album, due out sometime next year possibly. 80s synth pop? Hell yeah!

Helen D, graduate artist and illustrator, University of Lincoln class of 2008