Lee Wilson and Matt Prest discuss the making of Whelping Box exploring ideas of freedom, male bonding, masculinity and myth-making, as well as their collaborative process with co-creators Mirabelle Wouters and Clare Britton.
Interviewed by Keith Gallasch.
Whelping Box
Co-creators: Branch Nebula (Lee Wilson & Mirabelle Wouters), Matt Prest & Clare Britton
Sound: Jack Prest
Produced by Katy Green Loughrey & Viv Rosman, Performing Lines
Video documentation: Dennis Beaubois
Whelping Box premiered at (and was co-produced by) Performance Space Oct 25 – Nov 3, 2012 as part of SEXES.
Interview: Keith Gallasch, Nov 1, 2012
realtime tv production: Gail Priest
Tura, Shothole stage, Sounds Outback (… to Reef), Exmouth, WA
photo Peter Strain
Tura, Shothole stage, Sounds Outback (… to Reef), Exmouth, WA
IT IS NO EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT TURA NEW MUSIC PUTS PERTH ON THE MUSICAL MAP, NOT JUST FROM A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE BUT ALSO INTERNATIONALLY. FOR 25 YEARS, WITH TOS MAHONEY AT THE HELM, THE ORGANISATION HAS PRODUCED VAST NUMBERS OF CONCERTS, HOSTED RESIDENCIES AND GENERALLY ADVOCATED FOR THE ROLE OF NEW AND EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC, NOT JUST FROM WESTERN AUSTRALIA BUT FROM ACROSS THE NATION.
For a very small organisation, the output has always been ambitious with projects including the appropriately titled Totally Huge New Music festival (see the archive of RealTime coverage below) which takes place biennially and brings renowned international artists to Perth along with some of Australia’s leading composers and ensembles. Every other year Tura hosts the Sounds Outback Festival, the first four held at Wogarno Station with this year’s program moving to the glorious Ningaloo Coast. Add to this a Regional Touring Program and a range of country and city-based residencies and this is before we even get to the concert program. Scale Variable features concerts by small ensembles and Club Zho offers a regular, more casual gig format. Then there’s the Commissioning Program and a Young and Emerging Artists Program. Tura has also recently undertaken the mammoth task, in collaboration with The Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University, the State Library of Western Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Commission and the National Library of Australia, to create an archive of Western Australian music covering the last 40 years.
Tura, shearing shed percussion, Sounds Outback (… to Reef), Exmouth, WA
photo Peter Strain
Tura, shearing shed percussion, Sounds Outback (… to Reef), Exmouth, WA
The 25th birthday celebrations continue Tura’s agenda of promoting both local talent and interstate artists and comprise four concerts and a Club Zho bash. Before the formal concerts there’s also a rather swish fundraising event titled the Next 25 at an undisclosed private residence on the Swan River. Along with fine wine and food, it will feature performances by Ensemble Offspring. The first concert will also be by Ensemble Offspring who will perform celebratory compositions from Australian composers such as Matthew Schlomowitz and Marcus Whale alongside works by international composers Thierry de Mey, Larry Polansky and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Concert 2 exemplifies the broad scope of Tura’s agenda featuring Melbourne audiovisual artist Robin Fox with Perth emerging artist Kynan Tan. Fox, renowned for his works with sound and lasers, will be presenting some of his new experiments with synchronators which take sound and translate it, according to frequency, into the colours of the spectrum. Tan, who has been mentored by Fox as part of the Jump program (http://jump.australiacouncil.gov.au/about/), will present his new work, multiplicity, which explores “tiered levels of interaction between the sonic and visual, in the form of computer-generated sound and imagery, manipulated brain data and complex data visualizations” (program).
Decibel, performing The Talking Board at Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011
photo Brad Serls
Decibel, performing The Talking Board at Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011
Perth ensemble Decibel will take charge of the third concert to explore the acoustic properties of the Hackett Hall Gallery at the Western Australian Museum, focusing on how the space responds to genres such as jazz, indie, music concrete, minimalism and glitch. The concert will feature compositions by Australian composers Erik Griswold, Mace Francis, Chris Cobilis and Decibel members Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery, as well as pieces by international composers Lionel Marchetti, Roger Smalley, Tristan Murail and an arrangement by Decibel of Lalo Schifrin’s In the Floodlights.
The final concert will also feature Erik Griswold with Vanessa Tomlinson as Clocked Out Duo exploring the recent proposition by physicist Frank Wilczek of the existence of “time crystals…perpetually moving structures that repeat periodically in the fourth dimension” (program). On piano and percussion the duo will use patterning and poetic interpretations of perpetual motion and crystalline structures. Sounds like a fascinating composition most fitting for a time-based celebration.
No birthday is complete without a party which will be manifested as Club Zho’s 100th gig. It will feature an array of local artist who’ve participated in Tura over the last 25 years, all of whom have helped make Perth the vibrant musical city it is today.
Tura 25th Birthday Celebrations, artistic director Tos Mahoney, various venues, Perth, Nov 21-Dec 6 2012; www.tura.com.au
Jon Rose, Totally Huge 2001
photo Nat Brunovs
Jon Rose, Totally Huge 2001
tura archive highlight
RealTime has been around for 18 of Tura’s 25 years. Below is a selection of some of our coverage of the Totally Huge Festivals and other Tura presentations.
totally huge new music festival
2011 totally huge new music festival 2011—onsite coverage
RT’s Associate Editor Gail Priest was joined by local writers Sam Gillies and Henry Andersen to deliver daily reviews of concerts, installations and events across the 10-day festival. There are 14 reviews plus video interviews with Marina Rosenfeld and Speak Percussion’s Eugene Ughetti.
Online feature September, 2011
2009 machine age new music
jonathan marshall: decibel, tape it!, totally huge new music festival 2009
RealTime issue #94 Dec-Jan 2009 p49
Offered biennially, the Tanja Liedtke Fellowship seeks to honour the memory and continue the legacy of choreographer and dancer Tanja Liedtke whose life was tragically cut short in 2007. The fellowship seeks to support contemporary dance artists and encourage Australian/European connections. The 2013 program is quite specific and offers the successful fellow a structured program of events in Berlin and Frankfurt in August-September 2013. Firstly they will receive studio time at ada Studios in Berlin to undertake a three-week creative development process on a project of their own devising. Simultaneously they will be able to attend many of the events of Berlin’s major dance festival Tanz im August. They will then move to Frankfurt to take part in the Tanzlabor_21 International Summer Lab which will bring together postgraduate students and emerging artists for intensive workshops and forums. The fellow will also be able to attend accompanying performance events at the contemporary arts venue Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Applications are open for Australian dancers/choreographers between the ages of 20 and 35. Applications due Dec 14, 2012; see website for more information http://www.tanja-liedtke-foundation.org/current-projects/fellowship-2013.html
aphids indigenous mentoring program
Applications are now open for Aphids Mentoring program aimed specifically at emerging Australian Indigenous artists. Taking place between February and November 2013, the program offers the successful mentee financial and infrastructure support to work with a mentor of their choice developing a project that “expands strategies, skills and networks for creating interdisciplinary artwork” (website). The emerging artists may already have experience in interdisciplinary work or commencing explorations in this area. Applications are due Dec 3, see website for more information http://aphids.net/residencies-and-mentoring/Aphids_Indigenous_Mentoring_Program
vivid light 2013
The Vivid Festival, while only a few years young has had a significant impact on Sydney’s cultural and tourism calendar. While a lot of the festival aims at large-scale spectacle with the Opera House becoming the equivalent of a giant disco glitterball, there’s also the opportunity for some more intimate, on the ground discoveries via Vivid Light, the installation wing of the festival. Vivid Light is now calling for proposals. If you are a projection artist, lighting designer or sculptor with new ideas for public installations and light manifestations you have until December 3 to lodge your expression of interest. For more information see http://www.vividsydney.com/expression-of-interest-vivid-light-2013/
creative partnerships with asia, australia council
The Australia Council has recently announced a new initiative seeking to strengthen cultural connections between Australia and Asia. The Creative Partnerships with Asia program will offer grants of up to $40,000 for projects that involve a two-way exchange between Australia and an Asian country (defined for the initiative as Japan, China, Korea, India, South and South East Asia). The initiative covers all artforms and the projects must involve a significant presentation of a work developed through this project in both countries as well as artistic exchange workshops. Deadline for expressions of interest is Jan 31, 2013 with invitation only applications closing date April 8, 2013. See website for more information http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/grants/grants/2012/creative-partnerships-with-asia-initiative
We’ve come to expect something a little bit spectacular from David Clarkson’s work with Stalker over the company’s 20-plus year history. Generally this has been the result of the raw physicality and daring, his shows frequently involving vertiginous acrobatic stilt walking—and even a giant catapult. However for his latest work, Encoded, Clarkson has gone totally high-tech.
Encoded explores how the body effects space and space effects the body. Projected environments respond specifically to the movement of dancers and aerialists, triggered by infrared tracking. In addition the dancers wear digital costumes—self-mounted laser projectors that bathe the performer in ever-shifting designs. Clarkson has enlisted an impressive design team to create this vision including Alejandro Rolandi, whose recent production Return to Trees at Carriageworks was an impressive physical theatre piece in itself; Andrew Johnston, an interactive design specialist and co-director of the Creativity and Cognition Studios at UTS; and Sam Clarkson, an award winning game designer and “world leader in photo?real graphics research, development and implementation” (press release). Clarkson has also enlisted Paul Selwyn Norton, longtime dancer with William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt, as choreographer. See the video above and book your tickets for Encoded’s short season.
Ensemble Offspring have presented an ambitious and innovative program in 2012. Their last concert for the year, to be performed in both Sydney and Melbourne, looks to be no exception (see our realtime tv video interview and also the preview of Tura’s 25th birthday celebrations). In Sydney they will take over both the theatre (Bay 20) and the vast foyer of Carriageworks to present On Loop. Featured performers include the Australian turntablist Martin Ng and Scottish accordionist James Crabb (see a review of his Campbelltown Arts Centre concert in RealTime 112). UK composer Matthew Wright, whose work spans both dots-on-paper composition and turntablism, will also be in the country to present his new work, Totem for Sydney. Amsterdam-based pianist Cor Fuhler is no stranger to Australia, but is more often found in the improv scene. He will present a new composition, When Snoopy Met Boop. Other works in the concert include Memo by Dutch composer Michel van de Aa (see interview in RT78) and Gavin Bryar’s famous tape-loop work Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. There’ll also be an installation in the foyer of ‘old school’ tape loops. Ensemble Offspring, On Loop; Carriageworks, Sydney, Dec 1;
Melbourne Melbourne Recital Centre, Dec 6; http://ensembleoffspring.com/
(TIP: In Sydney you can make a night of it and see the matinee of Encoded followed by On Loop!)
international space time concerto competition
The finalists in the International Space Time Concerto Competition will be presenting their works in Newcastle, NSW at the end of the month. (For a handy primer on the concerto form by Matthew Lorenzon see our preview of the competition in our May 22 e-dition.) On November 30 the finalists in the Networked Music Performance category—Cat Hope (WA), Greg Schiemer (NSW) and Chow Jun Yan (Singapore)—will present their works via link-ups between performers in Newcastle, Austria, Singapore, China and New Zealand. The works factor in the inevitable latencies (repeat the mantra “bring on the NBN!”) and range from concertos written for pipe organ to string orchestra and an iPhone ensemble. (You can see a realtime tv interview with Cat Hope here; and read about Greg Schiemer’s phone music here.)
The final concert on December 2 at the University of Newcastle’s Harold Lobb Concert Hall presents historic symphonies by composers such as Dvo?ák, Schumann, Prokofiev and Preston performed by finalists in the solo instrumentalists category. These traditional concertos will be combined with the works by finalists in the innovation category such as Orbis Tertius (ACT) who will present Trial of the Ignorant Truth Concerto (2012) which explores equal temperament using instruments such as the erhu, the saz, a musical saw and a microtonal guitar. Also from ACT, John Burgess will present his Concerto (2012) for adapted electric double bass. Getting more physical, Mary Mainsbridge (NSW) will perform her Code-centric Motion (2012) for voice, gesturally controlled digital instrument and orchestra. Perhaps the most genre-bending contribution comes from Robert Jarvis (Vic) who will perform his Concerto for Light Sculpture (2012) using a digital interface called a Monome that allows light and sound to played in tight synchronisation. There is an overall prize pool of $50,000 divided between the category winners. International Space Time Concerto Competition presented by University of Newcastle in collaboration with Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, Singapore, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, Waikato University, New Zealand and Ars Electronica, Austria; Newcastle Conservatorium, Nov 30; University of Newcastle’s Harold Lobb Concert Hall, Dec 2; http://www.spacetimeconcerto.com
body fluid—the seven cycles, john a douglas
John A Douglas, Body Fluid, Saline Ascent (video still)
courtesy the artist
John A Douglas, Body Fluid, Saline Ascent (video still)
In RT106 Ella Mudie wrote about John A Douglas’ 10-hour durational performance at Performance Space: “In a surreal setting melding the chintzy glamour of a lo-fi science fiction film set with the sparse interior of a hospital room, the artist began by lying prostrate on the floor while hooked up to a peritoneal dialysis machine, plastic tube protruding from his rotund Buddha belly. Dressed in a tight, shiny, gold bodysuit that covered eyes, nostrils and mouth, there was a wry humour in its resemblance to both submissive bondage attire and a Hollywood superhero costume gone awry.” (See full review.)
The video backdrop to this performance featured Douglas, in the same gold costume, appearing and disappearing in the distance around a salt lake, in a reference to Nicolas Roeg’s science fiction classic The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Douglas will present the continuation of this work at Chalkhorse Gallery from November 22, with photographic and video works of this mysterious golden man wandering the Mallee Country and the Snowy Mountains. Douglas says, “in these mediated figurative landscape works, the imaginary golden figure takes on powers of levitation and flight through the replenishment of bodily fluids within the Australian landscape.” Douglas is currently the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Museum of Human Disease, UNSW, thanks to an Australia Council AIR grant. Body Fluid—The Seven Cycles, John A Douglas, Chalkhorse Gallery; open Nov 22; http://www.chalkhorse.com.au/
241 years, morrish, osborne, jeyens, rorhrig
Some of us in Sydney had the rare pleasure to spend time embroiled in the circular thoughts and profound whimsy of improvisor Andrew Morrish during Campbelltown Art Centre’s Oh I Wanna Dance With Somebody (to be reviewed in RT112). Fear not if you missed it, there’s more to come. He has teamed up with long time collaborator Tony Osborne as well as two other seasoned improvisers Kevin Jeynes and John Rohrig, to present a touring show called 241 years. We are told that this number is the sum total of the improvisors’ ages. The team has already blasted through Brisbane, will briefly be taking on Dancehouse in Melbourne, and will end their tour in Sydney at Marrickville’s Sidetrack Theatre. (The Sydney season is a double bill with youMove Company’s tenofus which will present solos by Narelle Benjamin, Tony Osborne, Vicki Van Hout, Anton and Angela French.) Who knows what to expect, but from previous outings, the moments of failure are even more intriguing than the moments that succeed.
241 years, Andrew Morrish, Tony Osborne, Kevin Jeynes, John Rohrig; Dancehouse, Melbourne, Nov 21-22, www.dancehouse.com.au ); with youMove Company’s tenofus, Sidetrack Theatre, Sydney, Nov 23-24; http://www.sidetrack.com.au/; http://youmovedance.com.au/
the conversation, jon mark oldmeadow, claudio tocco
The Conversation, Jon Mark Oldmeadow, Claudio Tocco
courtesy the artists
The Conversation, Jon Mark Oldmeadow, Claudio Tocco
Putting a new spin on multi-channel video installation is Jon Mark Oldmeadow and Claudio Tocco’s The Conversation. The installation features three participants who have migrated from Peru, Germany and Sri Lanka sharing memories of their home countries. However, rather than each screen having a fixed and dedicated soundtrack, the audience is supplied with wireless headphones thus receiving different aspects of the soundtrack according to their position in the gallery space. This allows the viewer the freedom to construct their own sense of these stories. Jon Mark Oldmeadow was previously involved in the Safari Team art collective that presented the ambitious Molto Morte and Evolution at the 2008 and 2010 Next Wave festivals respectively. The Conversation, Jon Mark Oldmeadow, Claudio Tocco, Seventh Gallery, 155 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy; til Dec 1; http://seventhgallery.org/
upraw online gallery
As most things move to virtual platforms, it makes sense that galleries do too, and UpRaw is a prime example. It is a new initiative from the art investment company Art Equity with a focus on selling the work of young and emerging artists, with some rather reasonable price tags ranging from $170 to $2000. There’s a stable of 20 artists with works ranging from the street stencil style of Doug Bartlett to the dusky detailed prints of Kate Piekutowski and the moody Crewdson-esque staged photography of Jack Condon. While the gallery is generally virtual it will have a physical ‘pop-up’ home for two weeks at 174 Crown Street Darlinghurst. UpRaw, exhibtion 174 Crown Street Darlinghurst, opens Nov 28; http://www.upraw.com.au/
THE OTHERFILM FESTIVAL HAS ALWAYS BEEN, WELL, ‘OTHER.’ AT THE HEIGHT OF NEW MEDIA HYPE THE TEAM OF SALLY GOLDING, JOEL STERN AND DANNI ZUVELA DECIDED TO LAUNCH A FESTIVAL THAT WAS ALL ABOUT OLD MEDIA, EXPLORING EXPANDED CINEMA WITH ROOTS IN THE 1960S.
Eight years on and new media as a term and genre has lost some of its glamour, integrated as it is into everyday life, and it seems the OtherFilm Festival curators are questioning their ties to the old forms. Their festival 2012 curatorial statement reads: “…for us, privileging film has become problematic. While initially our commitment to film allowed us to develop critical tools and assert our distinct interests, we are now pressing up against the limitations of our critique…As an organisation, we no longer consider it prudent to fetishise film—but nor do we consent to indiscriminate platform promiscuity. We want to deal with mediums in more nuanced, less dogmatic, ways. We are moving on.”
So in 2012 Otherfilm moves on to include a range of ‘other’ media-driven performances, but there is still a familiar air of historicity, not to mention a strong waft of theoretical rumination in the selection of works. For example one of the special international guests is Takahiko Iimura who has been working in the area of conceptual video and performance since the 1960s. The Video Semiology screening is a retrospective of his works focusing on a range of his experiments into identity, speech and the phenomological loop formed by video.
Bruce McLure
courtesy the artist
Bruce McLure
On the opposite end of the scale but with no less rigour is the work of Bruce McClure who will be performing his work The Fiercer the Fire the Longer the Spoon comprising several smaller recent pieces. McLure works with a 16mm projector but a seemingly blank frame, exploring the very mechanism of the apparatus to create an audiovisual assault of strobing light and manipulated sound artifacts; however the curators assure us that the “performances expand and extend from the initial blast into long-form investigations of spatial and temporal re-orientation” (program).
Peter Burr, Future TV
courtesy the artist
Peter Burr, Future TV
Third international guest Pete Burr will present a kind of live cartoon show, showing works from his network of US underground animators and cartoonists but interacting with the works, appearing in them as a live host using green screen technology. While the format sounds laugh-a-minute, all of the animations are inspired by the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1971 sci-fi film Stalker, suggesting a more contemplative experience than a cartoon caper.
Co-curator Sally Golding will return from the UK where she has been experimenting with darkroom techniques: “printing, reprinting and manipulating waveform images on the optical soundtrack of 16mm celluloid take her work to a new level of photo-chemical nonsensitude” (program).
It’s an ambitious program that will take manifest in various combinations in several cities. In Brisbane the bulk of the festival resides at the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) which is also a key presenting partner, but the opening night will take place on an old naval ship, the HMAS Diamantina, moored at the Queensland Maritime Museum. The ship will be filled with audiovisual and performative experiments from a range of national artists such as Danny Wild, Audrey Lam and Caitlin Franzman, Sarah Byrne, Jason, Bonnie Hart, Vijay Thillamullu, Joe Musgrove and Patrick King.
In Melbourne, New Low, a relatively recent artist-run-space will play host and the international guests will be complemented by local artists Richard Tuohy and Matthew Brown, Jarrod Factor, Kit Webster, Marcia Jane and gallery founder Tara Cook. Then there’s an all nighter at the Meredith Music Festival (a three-day event in rural Victoria) where the psychedelic nature of many of these performances should be well appreciated. The festival wraps up with a one-night-only show in Adelaide in partnership with Lost City at the Tuxedo Cat!
Otherfilm 2012 presented by OtherFilm, IMA, Screen Queensland: curators Sally Golding, Joel Stern, Danni Zuvela, Brisbane: Queensland Maritime Museum and Institute of Modern Art, Nov 29-Dec 1; Melbourne: New Low Gallery, Dec 5-6; Meredith: Ecoplex Cinema, Dec 7-8; Adelaide: Lost City, Dec 10; http://otherfilm.org/
Co-directors of Branch Nebula Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters discuss their upcoming project Concrete and Bone Sessions which will be part of the 2013 Sydney Festival, their future planes and their working relationship.
Interviewed by Keith Gallasch.
Creative development showing
Performers: Bboy Blond, April Caslick, Roland Chlouk
Cloé Fournier, Alexandra Harrison, Ali Kadhim
Simon O’Brien, Chris O’Donnell, Kathryn Puie
Music: Bob Scott
Video footage: Dennis Beaubois & Ali Kadhim
Produced by Performing Lines.
Branch Nebula is supported by Managing and Producing Services (MAPS) NSW, managed by Performing Lines.
Daniel Matej and ensemble, Graphic Scores, Soundstream New Music Festival 2012
photo Keith Halden
Daniel Matej and ensemble, Graphic Scores, Soundstream New Music Festival 2012
DANIEL MATEJ IS A COMMANDING FIGURE IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AND THE DANIEL MATEJ IN PERSPECTIVE RECITAL AND GRAPHIC SCORES CONCERTS IN THE 2012 SOUNDSTREAM NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL PAINTED AN INTRIGUING PICTURE OF THIS SLOVAKIAN COMPOSER’S UNIQUE COMPOSITIONAL SENSIBILITY.
For the three works of the Graphic Scores concert, Matej conducted the Matej Ensemble—University of Adelaide Conservatorium students assembled for this event and performing on strings, wind, brass, percussion, keyboards, voice and electronics—with violinist Jon Rose soloing in the second item. The first piece was Polish composer Zygmunt Krauze’s Voices for Ensemble (1968/1972). Inspired by the ‘unistic’ abstract art of Wladyslaw Strzeminski, Krauze’s subtle music avoids drama and tension, the listener’s awareness drawn instead to compositional nuances, timbre, texture, choice of instrumentation and the perception of time. A dreamy clarinet line threads through this absorbing music, which is punctuated by pauses, long enough for audience members to notice ambient sound and reflect on their listening.
This teasing opener readies us for Matej’s Structures, Pages (…and Improvisations) (2010-2012). Here Matej gives each performer a printed chart listing five different hand gestures he will use while conducting, the movements correlating to specified musical material, dynamics and tempi. The material itself is drawn from other composers’ manuscripts including US composer Earl Brown’s December 1952 (from FOLIO; 1954), a seminal graphic score work using the simplest notation: horizontal and vertical lines of varying lengths and thicknesses. As the piece unfolds Matej gestures what to play, building the sound like a painter mixing paint directly on the canvas. Matej’s conducting responded to soloist Rose’s unique playing, resulting in a vibrant, heavily layered, multi-voiced orchestration of contrasting tone-colours, timbres and intensities. Matej cites Rose as a significant influence in his work.
Jon Rose, Graphic Scores, Soundstream New Music Festival 2012
photo Keith Halden
Jon Rose, Graphic Scores, Soundstream New Music Festival 2012
In spontaneously shaping the ensemble’s responses to fragments of other manuscripts into the overall sound, Matej expands the concept of the graphic score to encompass his own improvisation. The result is compelling conceptually as well as musically, acknowledging and extending Brown’s achievements.
The Graphic Scores concert concluded with Four6 (1992), one of John Cage’s last works, 30 minutes of enthralling sound in which this energetic ensemble, arranged around the perimeter of the auditorium, used time-brackets to structure their performance.
The Daniel Matej in Perspective recital, comprising works by Matej principally for solo piano, further revealed the extraordinary character and complexity of his composition, the music ranging from exquisite romanticism to comic buffoonery. The recital opened with Fragile (2009), subtitled With Prelude in E minor by Chopin, a fragment of which emerges late in the score. For prepared piano, it begins slowly and softly, the preparation muting some lower notes, building in intensity through repeated figures. There is a poignant moment when the Chopin passage reaches and then ends on the muted notes, as if Chopin himself is being muted and then paused. Perhaps Matej is lamenting the passing of pianism’s great era. The program booklet indicates that the work is dedicated to a friend’s family, and the pitch material is based on anagrams of their names and those of Chopin, Webern and Feldman (whose musical styles are all evident). This complex conceptualisation appears typical of Matej, but the result, in the romantically attuned hands of pianist Marianna Grynchuk, is enchanting.
Daniel Matej and pianist Marianna Grynchuk, Daniel Matej in Perspective, Soundstream New Music Festival 2012
photo Keith Halden
Daniel Matej and pianist Marianna Grynchuk, Daniel Matej in Perspective, Soundstream New Music Festival 2012
Grynchuk excels again in Matej’s dramatic I Tried Them All and They Were Rotten (1995) inspired by Satie, and his wistful (Two) Lullabies (1995). The spell is then broken in Believe it, or Not! (from (three) Songs and Refrains), in which Matej jumps up and sings, accompanied by the piano, bawling out “Jesus loves you, oh he loves you…” to a rock beat, comically parodying religious zeal, the work evidently a response to fundamentalist evangelism.
Following two more dramatic solo piano works, Matej interrupts the pianist in his (when I’m) FIFTY (1997) by blowing across the necks of water bottles to produce resonant notes, playfully challenging the cultural authority of the piano recital. He then begins to whistle as Grynchuk plays, finally drawing her into whistling with him as she concludes the piece. In the final work, Bargain Happiness (2000), based on a Bach prelude, Matej again sings boisterously over the piano, and Rose, at the back of the auditorium, interrupts, firstly with his violin and then with his own comic song. Grynchuk is outstanding throughout in realising Matej’s challenging music.
The influence of the Dada movement seems to be present to some degree in many of Matej’s works, yet there is a powerfully seductive musicality throughout, with moments of great beauty and sensitivity. His acute awareness of musical history permeates his work and, although he appears to be repudiating musical traditions, he is creating new and interesting music that is built on them. This raises the general question of where composition is headed, but, in Matej’s hands, it is musical, conceptually challenging and great fun.
The piano was central to this year’s Soundstream New Music Festival, which also included an enthralling concert for two pianos (Paul Grabowsky and Gabriella Smart) featuring Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and the landmark Piano Phasing concert, where 60 pianists simultaneously played 30 pianos and which featured a commissioned work from Elena Kats-Chernin.
Soundstream New Music Festival 2012: Graphic Scores, Matej Ensemble conducted by Daniel Matej, violin Jon Rose; Daniel Matej in Perspective, piano Marianna Grynchuk, violin Jon Rose, plastic bottles & voice Daniel Matej; Madley Performance Space, University of Adelaide, Oct 12 & 13; http://www.soundstream.org.au/
This article first appeared in RT’s online e-dition Nov 20
five.point.one is a young company based in Adelaide currently making their Sydney debut with The Share, as part of the Seymour Centre’s Reginald season of independent theatre.
The Share, by playwright Daniel Keene, renowned for his dark, gritty and poetic works, is the story of two young men, friends since childhood, unemployed and on the streets. In a chance meeting with a one-eyed kid they hear about an opportunity to make some quick cash after which their lives unravel.
Directed by Corey McMahon, the play features Scott Marcus, Tom Conroy and Tim Spencer. The 2010 production won the Best Drama, Professional award in The Adelaide Theatre Guide Awards.
Courtesy of the Seymour Centre, RealTime has three double passes to give away for The Share on Saturday 24 November at 8pm.
Email onlinegiveaways@realtimearts.net with your name, contact number and address, by COB November 22, for a chance to receive a double pass.
NB: This is a Sydney event.
Branch Nebula is an important link in and continuation of the grand tradition of contemporary performance companies that have continually emerged in Sydney and beyond in NSW since the mid 1980s: The Sydney Front, Open City, Entr’Acte, Gravity Feed, Stalker, De Quincey Co, Urban Theatre Projects, The opera Project, The Fondue Set, version 1.0, My Darling Patricia, POST and more recently Team Mess and Appelspiel.
From the outset in 1998, under the direction of founders Mirabelle Wouters and Lee Wilson, Branch Nebula revealed a distinctive character, fusing a European performance sensibility (doubtless influenced by Wouters’ Belgian origins and her background in lighting, design and performance) and a potent physicality associated with Wilson as a performer and choreographer and the company’s passion for integrating street performance, sport and work forms into contemporary performance.
Mirabell Wouters, Lee Wilson, Sentimental Reason, Branch Nebula, 2002
photo Jon Green
Mirabell Wouters, Lee Wilson, Sentimental Reason, Branch Nebula, 2002
Back in 2002, Keri Glastonbury saw Wouters and Wilson’s striking performance of Sentimental Reason at Antistatic 1, a dance event at Performance Space. Her review, worth quoting at length captures the Branch Nebula brand of physicality and the thoughts it can generate: “Lee Wilson is irritable, pouting and sullen, while the half harnessed Mirabelle Wouters canters around him. She starts to generate a real flow for the piece, using the equivalent of the metonymic in movement in her ‘becoming horse.’ A cross between Iggy Pop and Equus, Wilson’s masculinity eventually explodes into a frenetic mosh-pit-of-one movement followed by some buff aerial work. That Wouters then gets nekkid is predictably feral perhaps, but adds an incarnate sense of flesh. Their base chakra exploration of the psychosexual in physical theatre works towards the form’s potential for embodied performance, with neither the male or female (horse or human?) subsumed or captured by the other.”
Plaza Real, co-produced with Urban Theatre Projects, was an impressive large scale work with a strong cultural and skills mix that followed in 2004. It evoked the liminal world of giant shopping centres “realised as performance with all the requisite clarity of intent and stylishness but with the most modest of means—sound, bodies, theatre lights shaped into strict lines and sculpted in an ominous cluster, and a sea of uniformly inflated plastic shopping bags. This is no literal recreation of a shopping centre, but an exquisitely surreal evocation of one in which superficial order and fine design will sooner or later surrender to fundamental passions, where the object is not purchase but the other—desired, fondled, embraced, stalked and attacked.”
<img src="http://www.realtime.org.au/wp-content/uploads/art/2/290_kg_paradise2.jpg" alt="Inge Liljestrom, Kathryn Puie, Michael Mulhall, Anthony “Lamaroc” Lawang, Paradise City”>
Inge Liljestrom, Kathryn Puie, Michael Mulhall, Anthony “Lamaroc” Lawang, Paradise City
photo Heidrun Löhr
Inge Liljestrom, Kathryn Puie, Michael Mulhall, Anthony “Lamaroc” Lawang, Paradise City
2007’s Paradise City revealed a stronger company identity in an optimistic focus on street culture, revealing the artfulness of the virtuosi of the skateboard, physical theatre, the BMX bike, dance and song framed by an effectively spare ramp design. The interplay of skills provided the work’s best moments. Whereas the ‘real’ in Plaza Real had to be read as critical, I wrote that “The ‘paradise’ of [this] title is at first glance ironic but, despite their occasional falls from grace, this street in this city is mostly heaven for its denizens and for those who espy them.”
Ahil Ratnamohan, Sweat, Branch Nebula
photo Heidrun Löhr
Ahil Ratnamohan, Sweat, Branch Nebula
In 2010, Sweat focused on the world of physical labour, its tedium and its liberating physical alternatives. In a RealTime interview in RT99 Lee Wilson explained,
” ‘What we’ve tried to do is to have the skills entering into Sweat almost in opposition to the work—as a way of conveying something personal about the performers. It’s a way of connecting with the performers on a human level.’ At the same time, says Wilson, ‘We’re looking at the way self-esteem is eroded by being constantly in service for very low pay and how that can affect workers psychologically’.” The culturally diverse artists in Sweat embodied skills in physical theatre, football, dance, parkour and breakdancing, with the artists working alongside a Japanese noisician while performing amidst their audience/masters and finally grossly reversing the power relationship.
Wilson also explained an important Branch Nebula agenda: “for Sweat, we’re supporting the artists to pursue their own practice and develop their material but also prodding and provoking them to extend that material choreographically.”
In August 2013 Branch Nebula presented the Royal Concrete And Bone Sessions in Launceston’s Skate Park for the 2013 Junction Arts Festival, investigating “the vulnerability of the body in relation to concrete in the skate park…how the body develops ways of moving and adapting in this space of concrete waves, into efficient and graceful ways of travelling” (press release). A new version of the show, which brings together professional skateboarders, BMX riders and locals, is being created for the 2013 Sydney Festival.
Let Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters tell you more about Concrete and Bone Sessions and this distinctive company’s plans for a performance in Finland later in 2013 in our realtime tv Branch Nebula video interview.
Keith Gallasch
realtime tv interviews
Lee Wilson & Mirabelle Wouters – Concrete and Bone Sessions
Lee Wilson & Matt Press – Whelping Box, a collaboration between Branch Nebula, Matt Prest & Clare Britton
sweat turning the tables, working the audience
carl nilsson-polias: sweat, branch nebula, dance massive
dance massive 2011 festival coverage
RealTime issue #102 April-May 2011 pg. 15
b sharp and blunt
kirsten krauth: b sharp, four on the floor
RealTime issue #44 Aug-Sept 2001 pg. web
Gareth Hart, Ellipsis
photo Sarah Walker
Gareth Hart, Ellipsis
ENTERING A SMALL DARK ROOM IN ARTS HOUSE, WE ARE OFFERED A SMALL CUP OF GREEN TEA AND HANDED WIRELESS HEADPHONES. THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME I’VE WORN HEADPHONES AT A PERFORMANCE; THEY SEEM TO BE AS UBIQUITOUS AS 3D GLASSES AT CINEMAS. IN ELLIPSIS WE SEE HOW THEY CREATE AN INTIMATE SPACE BETWEEN VIEWER AND THE PERFORMER.
Microphones pick up the most minute details of Gareth Hart’s solo dance—his foot scraping across the floor or, at the end of his performance, a long moment when he catches his breath before speaking. The headphones create aural cocoons and fill them with gentle compositions and ambient noise, such as the clatter and laughter from another show downstairs.
Fine red threads are woven and suspended from a frame not dissimilar to hospital curtain rails. Apart from that detail, the set is minimal and dimly lit. Hart could be in a cage, the red web containing his movements as he explores the language of his body and the movements it prefers. He explores these quirks in the way a musician works with the unique timbre of a violin. Playing on his physical appearance—his longish hair almost like a rooster’s comb—Hart moves like a bird, or man as bird. With a bent back he paws the ground with his bare feet and flicks his wrists as he turns on his foot and slides back from the red gossamer of his confines. We wonder if he is trapped—though he seems resigned to it—like a caged bird still fluttering as far as it can. His lack of expression and eye contact hint at sideshow voyeurism; the darkness and our containing headsets add to the feeling of illicitness.
Gareth Hart, Ellipsis
photo Sarah Walker
Gareth Hart, Ellipsis
In the second half of the performance fans gently blow the red threads creating a chance for interaction. Weaving in and out and exploring the filaments, Hart’s movements are at times robotic, then fast and frantic with rigid arms. These moments are then reined in with long smooth strides and control again. A loud chortle from a comedy show downstairs is jumped on—Hart laughs in return. In that instance, the performance bursts beyond the small room, the dancer’s web and our headsets.
Hart seems to point to the dichotomy in dance—that it has the propensity for showing truth but is open-ended. Some years ago he left theatre for dance and choreography; in a YouTube video he talks about the falsity he felt in playing characters. The deliberate eschewal of facial expression allows Hart’s body to flesh out veracity and he proves himself to be an adept storyteller. Certainly the awkward bending of his back with knees jutting forward is not frequently seen in dance. He conveys pathos through repetition and more anxious movements show a wariness of the boundaries of the installation. The audience is left with an understanding of Hart’s strings, how his body is strung to play, to dance—its physical truths and limits.
Gareth Hart, Ellipsis
photo Sarah Walker
Gareth Hart, Ellipsis
In a monologue at the show’s conclusion that teases out some of the threads of the performance, Gareth Hart tells us that the red lights of our headphones look to him like eyes in the dark. Then, cutting the tension and breaking the spell, he wryly suggests that we’re mulling over the show and thinking, “It’s all a little weird.”
2012 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Ellipsis, choreographer, performer Gareth Hart, composers E Willoughby, W Lynch, A van Schothorst; Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Oct 9-13
This article originally appeared as part of RT’s online e-dition Nov 6
ADELAIDE’S ANNUAL OZASIA GENERATES SIGNIFICANT CROSS-CULTURAL AND CROSS-GENRE ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT. THE FEATURE MUSICAL EVENT IN OZASIA 2012 WAS THE MARTIAL ARTS TRILOGY CONCERT, IN WHICH RENOWNED CHINESE COMPOSER TAN DUN DIRECTED THE ADELAIDE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA IN RENDITIONS OF HIS SOUNDTRACKS FOR THREE MAJOR FILMS: HERO (2002, DIRECTOR ZHANG YIMOU), CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000, ANG LEE) AND THE BANQUET (2006, FENG XIAOGANG). FILM MUSIC IS JUST ONE ELEMENT OF TAN DUN’S WIDE COMPOSITIONAL RANGE.
In this concert, the music was performed in front of a screen showing excerpts from the films blended with live camera close-ups of the soloists and Tan Dun as conductor, forming a unique visual backdrop for the orchestra. In cinema, sound generally supports the action and is often considered a subsidiary element, but in the Martial Arts Trilogy concert the visual material supports the musical performance, giving visual embodiment to the drama within the music. There’s a moment where a shot from the film of a guqin being played coincides with a sublime guqin solo. And there are many slow-motion martial arts scenes, with warriors flying magically through the air, that create a ballet to the music, as if choreographed to the musical line.
The Martial Arts Trilogy, Tan Dun
photo Kevin Yatarola
The Martial Arts Trilogy, Tan Dun
Tan Dun’s scores for these films are orchestrated as a set of concerti, each work featuring a soloist. ASO concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto was outstanding as the violin soloist in the performance of music from Hero, establishing a dialogue with Xiaoxia Zhao’s guqing and articulating the tension between the film’s leading characters. The guqing sound blended beautifully with the violin and orchestra, setting traditional Chinese music within a Western musical framework. Li-Wei, the cello soloist for the music from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Jiayi Sun, the piano soloist in the music from The Banquet, gave excellent performances. Tan Dun’s writing for them is magnificent, requiring the highest level of execution and supported by theatrical but highly musical orchestration that characterises the narrative but is not dependant on the visual material for its effect.
Tan Dun has refreshed the traditional violin/piano/cello concerto concept by melding it with cinematic material and multimedia presentation, and bringing it to a significantly wider audience by allying it with cinema. The Martial Arts Trilogy concert embodies a significant artistic development, where film, live video and live music merge into a distinct form.
Kailash Kher
courtesy OzAsia Festival
Kailash Kher
Another feature OzAsia performer was star Indian singer Kailash Kher, a household name in Indian communities, and it was fitting that in a festival intended to bring Indian cultural exchange to a local audience, he and his band Kailasa would have a central role. His concert at the Festival Centre drew a packed house of ardent fans, many singing along and dancing in the aisles. He sings his joyous songs in a soaring voice, the backing music drawing on traditional Indian forms, jazz fusion and Bollywood pop. Much of the material is devotional, and he is often compared with the late qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The recasting of devotional music in a pop format transmits it to an audience that has grown up with a popular music sensibility. Kailash Kher’s music is seductive on many levels, and carries great spiritual weight.
Sandy Evans’ Indian Project has established a highly individual and powerful musical form, its mix of styles fitting well into the OzAsia Festival context. Legendary Australian jazz saxophonist Evans has been exploring Indian musical traditions for many years, and one of her teachers, Sri Lankan sitarist and singer Sarangan Sriranganathan, performs with her in this ensemble. Evans and Sriranganathan create an hypnotic fusion blending western jazz with Carnatic and Hindustani music, to which the expressive, mellifluous sax, paired with the sitar, is ideally suited.
The concert featured Evans’ Seven Stories of Dreams, a performance involving a degree of improvisation. The composer states in the program note that when she composes for improvisers, her main inspiration comes from the musicians she is writing for. This hybrid music’s character and strength lie in the hands of the musicians as they perform, their traditional material transforming itself and evolving as they play. It requires musicians who have mastered their respective genres to the point where they can adapt them spontaneously. One performer develops a melodic line and then the others respond to it, resulting in a delightful musical conversation. When two follow the same melodic line simultaneously, wonderful timbral effects are created. Seductive, swaying rhythms flow through every piece. This is music of much thought, development and rehearsal, highly refined and superbly delivered.
In the Crouching Tigers concert, an ensemble of members from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra joined Xiaoxia Zhao to present new short works by five emerging Australian composers invited to write pieces exploring cross-cultural composition. Each composer was asked to include the guqin in the ensemble, and the resulting compositions were workshopped with Tan Dun. The composers variously explored the guqin’s unique sonic properties and character, developing all kinds of effects when allied with violin, cello, clarinet, trumpet, bassoon and percussion. The work that made the most eloquent use of the guqin was Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh’s beautiful Threading Through Fumes, in which the guqin and the string and wind instruments’ lines intertwine to evoke curling incense smoke trails. Xiaoxia’s hands caress the guqin and, to conclude the work, she drops small pieces of foam rubber onto the strings to create wispy, barely audible sounds. Commissions for such events inspire exciting developments. This music was more cerebral than spiritual or visceral, but it cast a very special spell.
There is the question as to whether the re-invention of traditional music through hybridisation dilutes or undermines the strength of those traditions. But the process of hybridisation is itself well established and no culture can remain static for long. The OzAsia Festival’s musical programming demonstrates how cultural interaction can stimulate rapid musical evolution while honouring the music’s cultural lineage.
Adelaide Festival Centre, Ozasia 2012: Martial Arts Trilogy, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, conductor Tan Dun, violin Natsuko Yoshimoto, guqing Xiaoxia Zhao, cello Li-Wei, piano Jiayi Sun, Festival Theatre, Sept 23; Kailash Kher and Kailasa, Festival Theatre, Sept 29; Sandy Evans’ Indian Project, saxophones Sandy Evans, sitar and vocals Sarangan Sriranganathan, double bass Brett Hirst, tabla Maharshi Ravai, Space Theatre, Sept 22; Crouching Tigers, composers Tristan Coelho, Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, Christopher Larkin, Lachlan Skipworth, Timothy Tate, guqin Xiaoxia Zhao with members of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Space Theatre, Adelaide, Sept 23; http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/
This article fist appeared as part of RT’s online e-dition Nov 6
Onnie Art, exist@QCA Sept 2012: Live Art Intensive Residency
photo Alan Warryn
Onnie Art, exist@QCA Sept 2012: Live Art Intensive Residency
DIMANCHE ROUGE IS A PARIS-BASED ARTIST COLLECTIVE (QUITE A LARGE ONE IF THE CONTACTS PAGE IS ANYTHING TO GO BY) FORMED IN FEBRUARY 2011 TO PRESENT A MONTHLY EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL. THEY PLACE STRONG EMPHASIS ON INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS AND ON NOVEMBER 18 WILL BE PRESENTING AN AUSTRALIAN COLLABORATION VIA THE WONDERS OF THE INTERNET.
They will team up with artist spaces/collectives in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and, in addition to the Paris program, will stream an hour of experimental performance to and from each venue. Nicola Morton from the Exist collective will be curating the Brisbane hour at Metro Arts; Zoe Scoglio has put together the program for Tape Projects in Melbourne (see RT111 for review or her receent show Shifting Ground); and Sari Kivinen an ex-pat Australian who runs Ptarmigan, an artist collective in Helsinki, Finland and Taalin, Estonia, will be in Sydney curating an hour of performance taking place at Alaska Projects.
There’s a lot on in the four hours but highlights might (depending on your proclivities) include Leena Riethmuller’s Saliva (Absorption) as part of the Brisbane program which will involve the artist grooming herself from a pool of her own pre-collected saliva. In Melbourne you can get up close and personal with Hannah Raisin’s Contact in which the artist will wrap herself in bubble wrap and you are invited to undertake the ever-so-satisfying task of popping the bubbles.
In Sydney, in the carpark that is Alaska Projects, Janet Meany will present Journey. Leaving white footsteps in bright yellow tumeric, she will trace a mandala-like circle in order to explore “the ephemerality of our naming and marking making as we journey through the cycle of life” (email from Sari Kivinen). Also in Sydney, Liam Benson (whose glamourous, glittery photos are currently on display as part of Sexes at Performance Space see RT111) will present a vocal performance using the acoustics of the carpark to explore his relationship with masculinity. There’s a synchroncity between this and Onnie Art’s Yasi in Brisbane, a duet for male and female voices and bodies symbolising “an elemental transmutation from female to male, water to fire” (press release).
Ane Lan, Persona, Dimanche Rouge
courtesy the artist
Ane Lan, Persona, Dimanche Rouge
The Paris iteration offers two performances. Ismael Ogando from the Dominican Republic will use elements of ancient African voodoo rituals—oil, powder and fire—to turn his African body in to a caucasian one in the performance Rite of West. While Norwegian artist Ane Lan will explore ideas around stage charisma and the cult of personality in contemporary media with reference to feminist theories, significant female artists and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in her performance of the same name. The downside for Parisians is they have to get out of bed to see these performances, but the upside is they’ll enjoy a complimentary breakfast and a Norwegian brunch.
Michaela Davies
photo courtesy MONA/Remi Chauvin Image Courtesy MONA Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Michaela Davies
Interestingly many of the performances move away from analogue body art/live art mode to incorporate a high level of mediation. For example in Brisbane there will be a performance by Botbog (see RT89), renowned for their parasitic audiovisual link-ups creating psychedelic synaethesic experiences. The Melbourne program features Michaela Davies’ Involuntary Duet in which Davies will convert one of her compositions into electrical muscle stimulation data, which she will then inflict on herself and bassist Sam Pettigrew—their involuntary spasming will then re-interpret the composition. (A recent outing of this process at the Musicircus celebrating John Cage’s centenary at the Sydney Opera House produced an entertaining if sometimes alarming performance.)
Head to the venue near you to get the full stream (and hope Australian broadband can cope).
Dimanche Rouge #21, in co-operation with Exist, curator Nicola Morton, artists Botborg, Leif Arwen Gifford, Onnie Art, Leena Riethmuller, Velvet Pesu, Jamie Hume and Ben H, Makeshift Dance Collective, Unique Oil Free Air, Marisa Allen, 459, Metro Arts, Brisbane; Tape Projects, curator Zoe Scoglio, artists Michaela Davies & Sam Pettigrew, Deanne Butterworth & Michael Munson, TR Carter & Arie Rain Glorie, Hannah Beth Raisin, Scratch Ensemble, Tape Projects, Melbourne; Ptarmigan, curator Sari Kivinen, artists tbc, Alaska Projects, Sydney; Dimanche Rouge, Ismael Ogando, Ane Lan, Le Dansoir Karine Saporta, Paris; November 18, 6-11pm; http://www.dimancherouge.org/; http://existenceperformanceart.wordpress.com/; http://tapeprojects.org/; http://home.alaskaprojects.com/
Maisie Parrngurr, Phone Booth, We don’t need a map
image Curtis Taylor & Lily Hibberd
Maisie Parrngurr, Phone Booth, We don’t need a map
THE MARTU ARE THE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF OVER 20 MILLION HECTARES OF THE WESTERN DESERT AREA OF AUSTRALIA WHICH INCLUDES PERCIVAL LAKES AND THE PILBARA. THE EXHIBITION TITLED WE DON’T NEED A MAP AIMS NOT ONLY TO PRESENT ARTWORK FROM THE REGION BUT ALSO TO INVOKE A TANGIBLE SENSE OF THE PLACE AS WELL AS ITS PEOPLE, THEIR STORIES AND RICH TRADITIONS.
The exhibition is produced by Fremantle Arts Centre in collaboration with Martumili Arts, a cultural hub instrumental in arranging the commercial sale of works which sustain the Martu community. The centrepiece of the exhibition is a five-by-three metre painting created by sisters Lily Long and Amy French which offers an intricate and highly detailed record of stories, sites, spirits and animals. This is complemented by over 40 paintings and works-on-paper by other artists in the region using a variety of techniques to depict daily life and ancient traditions.
Yunkurra Billy Atkins working on Cannibal Story, We don’t need a map
courtesy Fremantle Arts Centre
Yunkurra Billy Atkins working on Cannibal Story, We don’t need a map
The curators Gabrielle Sullivan from Martumili Arts, Kathleen Sorensen, a Martu artist and cultural consultant, and Erin Coates from FAC have also commissioned collaborative media-based works which bring together Martu and non-Martu artists. The Phone Booth Project sees Martu filmmaker Curtis Taylor and Melbourne visual artist Lily Hibberd collaborating on a video installation that explores the role of the public phone booth in these remote communities. In Cannibal Story, senior Martu artist Yunkurra Billy Atkins teams up with animator Sohan Ariel Hayes to bring to life Atkins’ images depicting the stories associated with Kumpupirntily (Lake Disappointment). Lynette Wallworth and her collaborator Peter Brundle have also travelled to Martu country and conferred with the local community to make a multi-channel video work titled Still Walking Country which explores the intricate connection between land and place as experienced via the perspective of newcomers to the area.
Lynette Wallworth, Kumbayah, Still Walking Country, We don’t need a map
image Lynette Wallworth
Lynette Wallworth, Kumbayah, Still Walking Country, We don’t need a map
The exhibition also involves a collaboration with Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa (KJ), a Martu controlled organisation that “seeks to build strong, sustainable communities based on Martu culture and knowledge” (press release). KJ’s ranger teams combine traditional land practices and environmental monitoring to assist with management of the area. They have provided interpretative information for the exhibition “linking the knowledge embodied in the paintings with sites, species, stories and landforms” (press release) and will be running Cultural Awareness Workshops.
And last but by no means least, the Pilbara will literally be coming to the FAC doorstep with 22 tonnes of soil being shifted to the front garden of the gallery in order to plant flora from the region.
FAC, Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa and Martumili Artists: We don’t need a map—a Martu experience of the Western Desert; Fremantle Arts Centre; Nov 17, 2012-Jan 20 2013 http://www.fac.org.au/;http://wedontneedamap.com.au/
Lady Electronica is a coalition of Queensland-based female artists working in the broad area of electronic music production embracing a range of genres from pop to ambient electronica to experimental instrument building and new interfaces. Four dynamic women “in command of technology” (website) will present a showcase of their work at the Judith Wright Centre. Anise, also known as Carly Dickenson, will launch her new single featuring vocals and progressive beats, utilising specially designed MIDI-gloves to activate a range of effects and samples. Rose Carrousel, aka Heidi Millington, will perform her take on folktronica and will premiere her NaturTron, a light-sound filtering device. Donna Hewitt continues the explorations of her eMic, the interface she has been developing over the last 10 years, allowing the vocalist to loop and effect her voice using sensors and controls on a specially designed microphone stand. Hewitt has recently been collaborating with dancers and for this performance will be joined by Lizzie and Zaimon Vilmanis. Finally Michelle Xen, who works across music and visual art, will also be launching her debut EP and multiplatform project SYNAESTHESIAC. The evening will be accompanied by audiovisual wonders from Wade Marynowsky who is presumably an honorary lady for the evening. Ladytronica Showcase, Judith Wright Centre, Nov 9 & 10; http://www.judithwrightcentre.com/02_cal/details.asp?ID=1134
cloudy sensoria, bundoora homestead
Chris Cottrell, Study for Cloud Sound 2012
courtesy the artist
Chris Cottrell, Study for Cloud Sound 2012
Heritage sites in Australia are increasingly becoming hotbeds of creativity and Bundoora Homestead is no exception. Located 16kms north of Melbourne’s CBD the homestead was built in 1899 in Federation Queen Anne style. It was originally home to an aristocratic racing family but in 1920 was sold and became an institution for traumatised and disfigured returned service men. After WWII it became a general “mental repatriation” facility where Dr John Cade made the groundbreaking discovery of lithium, the first effective medication for mental illness. The building remained a psychiatric facility until 1993; the main house was restored to become a cultural centre in 2001.
The current exhibition, Cloudy Sensoria, curated by sound artist Cara-Anne Simpson (see RT Studio) and Malte Wagenfeld (part of RMIT’s Urban Interior research group) taps into the site’s charged history. The works in the exhibition use light, sound and “qualities of smell, the dispersal of air in space” to challenge the gallery visitor to go beyond the idea of ‘seeing’ as a visual experience, in order to take in the full perceptual spectrum. Works include Cloud Sound by New Zealand artist Chris Cottrell using a camera obscura to project the sky from outside the homestead onto a wall in a darkened room. Accompanying fragments of sound and data gathered from the surrounding site are combined to form an aural cloud. Co-curator Malte Walgenfeld whose speciality is the “Aesthetics of Air,” has created an odiferous trail around the homestead in his work Scent Spheres. The gallery visitor may stumble upon a variety of smells associated with the history of the site: “a waft of fresh-cut hay conjures its life as a glamorous horse stud; a pungent whiff of Cresolene disinfectant reminds of its time as a repatriation hospital” (artist statement). Cara-Anne Simpson’s work requires you to put your head up one of the homestead’s many chimneys to experience her visual collage of the then-and-now view of the property along with an audio record of the space. The exhibition also features work by Jason Parmington and Georgina Cue both of whom use architecture, real and simulated, to explore the resonances of the house. There will also be a talk by the curators, Sight…Sound…Smell, which will explore the “intangible nature of air, sensation and spectres” (website). Cloudy Sensoria, co-curators and artists Cara-Ann Simpson, Malte Wagenfeld, artists Chris Cottrell, Georgina Cue, Jason Parmington, Bundoora Homestead, Oct 19-Dec 2; curators talk Thurs Nov 22, 2pm; http://www.bundoorahomestead.com/exhibition/cloudy-sensoria/
hail, amiel courtin-wilson, national release & exhibition
Daniel P Johnson, Leeanne Letch, Hail, Amiel Courtin-Wilson
photo Germain McMicking
Daniel P Johnson, Leeanne Letch, Hail, Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Amiel Courtin-Wilson is perhaps best known for his documentary on Jack Charles titled Bastardy (review RT91). Hail follows a similar development process evolving out of a deep personal relationship with the protagonist, in this case Daniel P Johnson, but here documentary slips over into fiction. Hail draws on real life aspects of Johnsons’s life as he tries to go straight after being released from prison, but after an initial period of hope, inspired by love, things start to turn bad, ending messily. In a review of Hail at its Adelaide Film Festival premier Keith Gallasch wrote “Hail is a drama feature that deftly manages to fuse documentary immediacy (fluid hand-held camera work, raw dialogue) with carefully constructed scenography built around lyrical editing and richly textured and adroitly framed widescreen cinematography (Germain McMicking). It’s a big screen, immersive experience.” (RT102).
Hail won the Age Critics Award for Best Australian Feature at the Melbourne International Film Festival. The film has been screened at a range of international festivals such as the Venice Biennale and Sundance. It has had a limited national cinema release, and is currently still playing at the Nova Cinema, Melbourne and MONA Cinema in Hobart (but be quick!). Also just opened at The Brunswick Street Bookstore is an accompanying exhibition of evocative production stills by cinematographer Germain McMicking and photographer Glendyn Ivin. For details on selected screenings see http://www.hailmovie.com/; Hail exhibition, The Brunswick Street Bookstore, 305 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy; http://germainmcmicking.com/; http://hoaxville.com/
accord with air: tjentiste, kusum normoyle
Kusum Normoyle, Accord with Air, Accord with Air: Tjentiste (2011-2012)
courtesy the artist
Kusum Normoyle, Accord with Air, Accord with Air: Tjentiste (2011-2012)
In an interview earlier this year for RT Studio Kusum Normoyle discussed ideas for the use of her performance documentation: “at the moment I feel like the presentation of documentation of the work is not really enough as an active or political act in the gallery, for example, and I’m becoming interested in exploring that space in perhaps a synthetic or theatrical way. Making adjustments to the video through effects or through layers that moderate the environment and turn it into a different place. Maybe make a building sing, or trying to unpack what sort of possible energetic things are going on in the environment. Maybe the building can sing, maybe it can vibrate—it is not as it seems.”
Her exhibition, Accord with Air: Tjentiste (2011-2012) coming up at Peloton exemplifies this development in her work as Normoyle explores her sonic and spatial relationship with the astounding Spomenik of Tjentiste, one of a number of imposing monuments erected across the former Yugoslavia commissioned by Tito to commemorate battles during World War II. Kusum visted the isolated site in 2011 and conducted one of her “screaming in the everyday” performances alone with the monument. She then manipulated the footage to enhance the audio and visual synergy of the space and the moment to vivifying effect. Peloton, Kusum Normoyle, Accord with Air: Tjentiste (2011-2012), November 8-Dec 1; http://peloton.net.au/e/accord-with-air–tjentiste
liverpool biennale 2012: uninvited guest, fact liverpool, uk
There’s still time for those in the UK to catch the 2012 Liverpool Biennale. Its theme “the uninvited guest” explores the idea of hospitality in a world where technology, immigration, violence and war are forcing “cultures of hospitality [to] confront one another as never before” (website). The Biennale involves over 60 artists across 19 venues including FACT, where Australian artist Jemima Wyman has been working (featured in our 2009 Induce coverage in Cairns). Wyman has been conducting workshops with local participants to create objects made from woven strips of camouflage fabric recycled from military and hunting wear which then redecorate the FACT atrium. Wyman says she is exploring the political power of the pattern, taking something that symbolises conflict and reconfiguring it to become soft and comforting. Through the communal nature of the construction process she is also exploring “role of fabric as social camouflage… a communal skin” (website).
Also at FACT are a series of works by Akram Zaatari (featured in dLux Media Arts D>art06, see interview). Zaatari often utilises found material such as his series of photographs of body builders which he has reproduced from damaged negatives taken by Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani in 1948, the resulting images depicting both virility and decay. The centrepiece is Dance to the End of Love (2011), a four-screen collage of seemingly banal YouTube clips uploaded by people from Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Saudi-Arabia and Oman on the eve of the Arab Uprising. Together the fragments illustrate what we are told is a “symphony in five movements about the loneliness of the oppressed, about hundreds of thousands crushed and forgotten in their home countries, who choose to use their computer screens as sites to live out their collective, heroic dreams” (website). Liverpool Biennale 2012, Uninvited Guest, Fact Liverpool, UK, Sept 15-Nov 25; http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/liverpool-biennial-2012-the-unexpected-guest/
things we’d like to see: rain room
RT managing editor Virginia Baxter spied this little gem. Random International’s Rain Room at the Barbican is a 100 square meter installation of falling water responsive to visitor movement—basically it stops raining around you—for a brief moment you control the weather; you are a god. For those in the UK go and have a play for us.
Random International: Rain Room Oct 4 – March 3, 2013, The Curve, The Barbicon, London UK; http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=13723
Robyn Archer, Creative Director of the Centenary of Canberra 2013, talks with Keith Gallasch about the year long celebrations. There is a strong Indigenous focus with highlights including Blak by Bangarra with Stephen Page and Daniel Riley McKinley; Hit The Floor Together by QL2 also featuring McKinley; the massive collaborative project Kungkarangkalpa: the Seven Sisters Songline under the artistic direction of Wesley Enoch; and a new work by Big hART, Hip Bones Sticking Out. Other highlights include Monument by Garry Stewart in collaboration with the Australian Ballet; a new commission by Patricia Piccinini to make a giant hot air balloon; and a retrospective of the experimental performance group Splinters and more. www.canberra100.com.au/
Gail Priest, in Luc Peire’s Environment III, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tomaki
photo Gail Priest
Gail Priest, in Luc Peire’s Environment III, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tomaki
reason for travelling
An unabashed holiday involving campervanning around the North Island
alternate realities
For Cayce Pollard, the hypersensitive American cool-hunter in William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition (2003), the sensation of being in London is like inhabiting a mirror world, everything the same, just horizontally flipped. I was reminded of this as a Sydney-sider in Auckland where things can seem alarmingly familiar, but rather than flippage it’s a sensation of slippage—a parallel universe where just a few small details have been altered. There’s a stunning harbour, great eating, interesting galleries, underground cool, an ancient indigenous culture overlaid by a recent colonial history and a city skyline dominated by a building that looks like a giant swizzelstick. However it’s the Sydney-that-would-be if we had a quarter of the population (New Zealand’s total population is roughly equivalent to that of Sydney’s alone), and if we had demolished fewer old buildings and embraced a more visible presence of our contemporary Indigenous culture (though this is by no means straightforward). And of course New Zealanders are so laidback and friendly!
Auckland skyline
photo Gail Priest
Auckland skyline
I had a curious introduction to Auckland via an in-flight video by local New Zealand personality Marcus Lush, who conducted an A-Z tour of Auckland as part of his TV series North. At the risk of stereotyping, he’s the New Zealander we’ve come to know from the Flight of the Concords—an understated mix of cynicism and sweet sentimentality. His tour guides us to strange rusty sculptures in out-of-the way parks; jogging paths (he suggests jogging was invented in Auckland); a tap at the back of a property that provides water from a genuine artesian spring; and a volcanic cave that’s just under someone’s garage. At first glance I thought, “Wow, he’s hard pressed to find things of interest in Auckland,” but in fact he introduces the idea of seeking small, nuanced pleasures in the niches of this beautiful city. (You can view the episode here, just ignore the error message saying you can’t view it outside of New Zealand; it seems playback is not blocked for Australia—we are honorary New Zealanders after all.)
for culture…
Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tomaki
photo Gail Priest
Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tomaki
The thing with quick trips to other cities is that you end up spending more time in the CBD than you would perhaps if you were a local, but Auckland’s city centre (and suburbs within walking distance) hold many of its key cultural features. Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tomaki is on the edge of Albert Park and, like many art centres, is an architectural amalgamation of an historic building, here in French Renaissance style, and a beautiful modern extension, which features sweeping canopies of glorious Kauri timber. Renovations were only completed in September last year. The gallery houses an extensive collection of art from New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region as well as some international masters. It also offers thematic exhibitions, such as Home AKL featuring contemporary artists from the Pacific region such as Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu, who have made Auckland their home (July 7-Oct 22, 2012). Particularly impressive is Whizz Bang Pop, an international overview of op, pop and kinetic art featuring some stunning works such as Luc Peire’s amazing mirror room, Environment III (pictured above), as well as smaller works by Annette Messager, Paul McCarthy, Australia’s John Nixon and Rosalie Gascoigne and New Zealand’s Daniel von Sturmer and local legend Len Lye (on until April 7, 2013).
Surrounding the Art Gallery is a precinct of smaller galleries, mainly commercial, but a bit further down into the centre is Auckland’s newest, and totally thriving artist-run-space, Snake Pit. Housed in a three-level commercial building which the owner has offered free of charge (for the moment), Snake Pit operates as a gallery and a music venue drawing on a strong student base and alumni from the Elam School for Fine Arts, University of Auckland, which co-founder Sam Thomas attended. It is also a hub for young fashion designers with its own shop, headed by co-founder Rosie Thomas. It’s ambitious, well attended and pretty darn cool.
The Parisian Tie Factory, home of the Audio Foundation, on the edge of Myers Park
photo Gail Priest
The Parisian Tie Factory, home of the Audio Foundation, on the edge of Myers Park
New Zealand has a reputation for fostering a vibrant alternative and underground music scene and in large part this has been fostered by the activities of the Audio Foundation. Established and run by Zoe Drayton it now even has its own space, with an office, gallery, small performance room, CD shop and zine library hidden away in the sub-basement of the Parisian Tie Factory just near Karangahape Road. In the week that I was there they presented a night of experimental electroacoustic music by visiting artists from Amsterdam, Shackle, an evening of contemporary Indian ragas and hosted an exhibition opening, so they certainly keep things rolling. Interestingly they have also recently published a book celebrating experimental music in New Zealand titled Erewhon Calling (edited by Bruce Russell). Its back cover blurb is remarkably similar to the Australian equivalent—Experimental Music: Audio exploration in Australia (2009), which I edited for UNSW Press. Parallel worlds indeed.
For cross-over experimental/alternative rock music there’s the Wine Cellar and Whammy Bar, literally 50 metres from Audio Foundation, hidden down the back steps of the historic St Kevin’s Arcade (was there really a St Kevin?). The Wine Cellar comprises a small room at the front for intimate gigs and the Whammy Bar, a bigger backroom. On the night I popped in I was treated to some amazing multitasking by Hide and Tallow, a one man band on drums, foot-pedal activated synth and spoken word, and the ridiculously epic and quite virtuosic post-rock-prog-hair-metal of Shepherds of Cassini.
On Monday nights, I was told, the Wine Cellar is home to Vitamin-S which is Auckland’s improv organisation, running weekly events as well as workshops. Programs generally consist of random trios drawn from “the pool” of Vitamin-S artists (open for anyone to join). It also plays host to travelling improv troubadours and masters.
view of Auckland harbour from the Sky Tower
photo Gail Priest
view of Auckland harbour from the Sky Tower
for refreshment…
Auckland’s baristas are testament to the fact that the Antipodes has it all over the northern hemisphere when it comes to coffee—not a single bad soy latte in my two-week trip. And plenty of good places to imbibe not only coffee but other beverages and local produce. My favourite was Imperial Lane, a large converted carpark with great breakfasts such as the genius concept of a breakfast salad—lettuce, mushrooms, avocado, bacon and a poached egg; or Danish creamed eggs with smoked salmon and pickles on rye bread; not to mention the French toast with tamarillo and crème fraiche. I regret I never got back to try the lunch/dinner tapas menu. Above Imperial Lane are another two floors of bars in what was once an old theatre.
Late night dining can often be a problem earlier on in the week in a foreign city, but we managed to stumble upon the simply titled Mezze Bar that always seemed to be open when we needed it. Again not crowded, candle lit, comfortable rustic furniture and with a large enough selection of wines, including sherries, and tapas style dishes to warrant repeat visits.
Across in Ponsonby, just out of the city centre and known for its shopping and gallery strip, I stumbled upon my best dining experience. Long Room offers a fascinating menu of Asian and Mexican dishes side by side, and it kind of makes sense. The confit of duck salad on Asian greens with mandarin and cashews was great and I only wished I’d been there with someone else to share a platter of Long Room fishcakes, chilli salt squid, green lip mussels and akaroa salmon gravlax. The wine menu featuring those famous crisp New Zealand whites also impressed.
For quick eating, there seems to be an endless (far more than in Australia) selection of sushi bars and Korean barbeque restaurants. And not to be missed are the fabulous Taiwanese/French cakes and sweets found at La Couronne. And while I would not normally frequent a Belgian beer bar, the Occidental in the city centre was perfect for a late Saturday afternoon Lambic cherry beer and steaming plate of New Zealand mussels with coriander and lemon.
for wandering…
Albert Park, Auckland
photo Gail Priest
Albert Park, Auckland
The most impressive thing about New Zealand is its absolutely breathtaking natural beauty. Really any trip must involve leaving the city, so I highly recommend campervanning. But if you can’t get away, then the parks in Auckland are a good alternative. Albert Park, bordering the CBD’s north-east, has quite magical old Pohutukawa trees with huge knotty branches and twisted ropey roots. Myers Park runs through a small ravine heading up to Karangahape Road and boasts steep walkways and huge palms, while Western Park runs off Ponsonby Road creating a little micro-bushland in the inner suburbs and features a nice sculptural piece by John Radford.
Then of course there is the spectacular harbour and its lapping waves of queer milky green. Just last year for the World Cup, the new Wynyard Quarter was opened, creating a an expansive promenade along the harbour foreshore and marinas, with a range of restaurants (all huge and uncrowded, even on Father’s Day afternoon), the Viaduct Events Centre and an ingenious kids’ play area surrounded by industrial detritus and towering silos (although I was told the silos were going to be knocked down for redevelopment—a little bit of Sydney style after all).
Silt Line, Rachel Shearer and Hillary Taylor, Wynard Quarter
photo Gail Priest
Silt Line, Rachel Shearer and Hillary Taylor, Wynard Quarter
If you hunt around and listen very hard, you might just discover artist Rachel Shearer’s The Flooded Mirror, a sound installation under the pier of the articulated bridge, issuing mournful creaks and haunting tones. Alas the work is far more subtle than intended due to complaints from surrounding neighbours and businesses, but it is still beautiful and captivating perhaps more so because of its secrecy. The sound is accompanied by a permanent cast concrete design on the steps leading down to the water, titled Silt Line, created in collaboration with Hillary Taylor and graphically representing the sound clusters used in the audio installation. Shearer also has a major work in Albert Park hidden among the trees. In fact Auckland is really quite into public sound installations (as long as the volume is moderate) with the international airport also featuring an impressive audiovisual piece Pou Manawa, created by Ignite Architects in conjunction with artist Michael Knapp. In Sydney we’ll just have to make do with the sculpture outside the QVB of Queen Victoria’s dog sporting the voice of John Laws.
(Thanks to Zoe Drayton for alerting me so to some of these activities.)
Gail Priest is a Sydney-based artist whose multi-faceted practice focuses on sound as the key material of communication and investigation. She performs live electroacoustic music, creates sound design for performance and video and has created her own installations. She is also the Associate Editor and Online Producer for RealTime. She has just released a split vinyl 12inch with Kate Carr titled Blue | Green. http://www.gailpriest.net
related articles on new zealand arts
the sound already present
sally ann mcintyre: sound full, dunedin public art gallery
RealTime issue #111 Oct-Nov 2012 pg. 50
