Using Marianna's ceramic vessel as a sound source I attempted to re-make it as a physical, though invisible sound sculpture. Mapping the speakers to represent the build of the vessel the sound materialises the form. Using resonant feedbacks, water, my hands, and my computers ever-present low hum as arbitrary measuring tools, the vessels sonic reactions were captured and edited together to form the composition.
The piece imagines the inner walls and cavernous spaces of the pot through object measured sound creation, building the vessel again through sound. Displayed through 6 speakers, mimicking the vertical build of the pot, the piece is presented again as a sculpture.
The vessel grows bigger as we shrink to fit inside and experience a speculative, inner world.
Mara is a sound artist and composer creating performed pieces, and commissioned soundtracks for dance, film, and installations. Her practice explores the crossover between physical and digital environments through the use of field recording and digital manipulation. In 2019 she graduated from RMIT with a Bachelor of Design (Digital Media) and went on to attend LungA School (Seyðisfjörður, Iceland) in early 2020. She has been commissioned by SIGNAL, Avantwhatever Festival, Constellations Podcast, Open House, and Mpavillion. Mara currently works with Liquid Architecture producing their podcast series.
This work was made on Boonwurrung and Woiworung land.
Untitled focuses on the visceral feelings of Inner-Sculpt, translating it into the static momentum of photography. Trudi writes, “I could very clearly see and feel the sensation of stone rhythmically grinding against stone. I was also struck by Mara’s explanation of the idea of what it would be like to live in the pot she was responding to [and] by the commonality of our mediums; in how they can ignite the senses. I wanted to repeat this synesthetic nature in my own work.”
To me, sounds moves in such a way that it envelops you, there is no true fixed point and each noise rolls after the other until it is done. Unlike a photograph, which has a static momentum and tangibly lies before you. Before Mara sent me their soundscape, I was interested in exploring the dichotomy between our two crafts and how their differences would interweave to create a new piece.
However, after I listened to the music, I was struck by the visceral nature of this work. I could very clearly see and feel the sensation of stone rhythmically grinding against stone. I was also struck by Mara’s explanation of the idea of what it would be like to live in the pot they were responding to. I was struck by the commonality of our mediums; in how they can ignite the senses and I wanted to repeat this synesthetic nature in my own work.
REFLECTION:
Being heavily entrenched in a more traditional fashion photographic practise, the creation of my work normally stems from previous imagery, the picture I take has been referenced from dozens of other photographs. This is standard amongst most commercial photographers. There was something so curious about this project for me, and the chance to respond to a stimuli that had the potential to be so far disconnected from my own craft. And in fact this was the case.
To me a soundscape, so fluid, each noise methodically floating after the other, is the opposite to the beauty found in the stagnancy of a still photograph. It is near impossible to freeze a moment in time in sound, in the way in which you freeze that moment in a photograph. I found it energising to respond to a medium so removed from my own, and challenging to interpret.
Furthermore there was something so nervous about creating a work that would then be transformed completely into something new. I found as I was emailing my work off to the next artist I felt somewhat tender, not knowing how my work was going to be interpreted as. Could they see what I was trying to say? Or was my work going to be stretched and evolved into something so different to what I expected, that I would not recognise myself in their response to my images. It is pretty amazing to be a part of one larger work (comprised of multiple individual pieces) from a dozen unique, crafts outlooks and experiences.
Trudi Treble is a local photographer based in Naarm. Her work, mainly in fashion, highlights the declarative softness of bodies. She aims to build a process which creates intimacy with everything she photographs.
This work was made on Boonwurrung and Woiworung land.
This work plays on the concept of something (such as object, image, recollection) lacking the physical ability to stimulate touch or sound senses, but containing enough essence to verge on evoking the same sensations regardless. Where musical sound is expected in this box, there is only light that both 'touches', but cannot really touch. This is further played on by the onomatopoeic words and letters that describe (rather than literally provide) the light, sound and tactile stimulants caused by the actions of opening and operating the music box.
"What interested me in Trudi’s work was that it captures sound as if it were physical, in a silent and physically untextured medium. Nevertheless it contains the possibility of sound and texture. It lingers on the senses, taunting, almost daring itself, but hanging back on a perpetual cusp of the real. I wanted to play with this ability of sense stimulants to deviously trade and jest with us. My music box is silent, with light ‘touching’ the skin instead. All the possible sounds that could be expected are absent. Instead they crawl out from inside as letters, spilling and swarming onto the surfaces. Like little devils laughing. The work is made from materials I have stumbled upon, cut apart and repurposed. The letters are my mother tongue."
Maira writes and draws and dances, and makes pictures, sometimes out of writing, or dancing. The stories in all of them are very old, but the voices young. Objects, landscapes and activities contain meaning. Perhaps you will recognise them. In any case she is experimenting, and these are her ruminations. Culture is her muse.
This work was made on Darug land.
Continuing on from Maira’s light play and material aesthetic, Mac Mansfield has produced a series of light box drawing. “I really loved Maira’s wonderful construction plans and making things responding to her ideas. In the works for this project I pressed drawings in a constructed frame that is backlit, shining light through the drawings towards the viewer.
Revealing the process of how the frames were assembled in the finished product was an important element to include in the works. I wanted to reflect on the enjoyment of understanding how an object is made, a feeling I had when imagining Maira's plans coming together.”
My work for this collaborative project has been through many alterations. Until now I have never attempted to work in such a responsive way to another work. I found it even more unusual to respond to a work that was made in response to a work.
I really liked a number of components in Maira’s wonderful construction plans and in imagining her work playing in a dark room. I was struck by the idea of constructing an object that expels light. Light as a component was something I really wanted to include.
Taking inspiration from Maira’s work I am setting out to make a series of small A6 light box frames for drawings. The frames will hold the drawings as normal frames, but in the back I'm going to put in a little LED that will back light the drawing.
I made some drawings in different ways on paper that I have shone light through. As an aesthetic decision I made the drawings on the back of the paper and shone the light through reversing the drawings. This made it really fun to make drawings as they turned out really different when flipped. It also gave the drawings a soft muted effect that I was after.
Here are some of the drawings backlit by a lamp. In these photos the lamp I used was slightly yellow (which is even stronger in the photos), the finished works will be a lot less yellow and I might experiment with different colour LEDs (likely red).
While I was in Japan over February I discovered the work of Yuki Onodera. The works I'm making for cycles have also been heavily inspired by her photo series, How to Make a Pearl. Onodera made this series of photographs by putting a marble in the body of her camera, so that a series of photos she took of crowds in the street outside looked like they are in darkness under a moon.
Mac graduated from the National Art School in 2019 with a BFA in ceramics. His practice negotiates the history of narrative visual art, working joyously across media subverting Ancient Greek and classical mythology. His work is visually theatrical and irreverent.
Working primarily in ceramics, Mac’s practise regularly involves making large traditional vessels as well as ceramic tablets that imitate stretched canvas. The painting and drawing on his ceramic vessels and tablets are naïve and wilfully ignorant of the high culture the forms suggest. Through this consciously naïve approach he expresses interest in combining modes of “high” and “low” art. Ceramics enables Mac to traverse a dimensionality not possible through traditional mediums of painting.
This work was made on Gadigal land.
Actively responding to the Mac's images whilst working in Logic, Hannah's work alludes to the glowing materiality of Mac's light box drawings, through melodies of bouncing repetitions.
Hannah Wu is a writer and musician from Aotearoa, based in Naarm/Melbourne. She has written for Un Magazine, Bus Projects, Seventh Gallery, Liminal Magazine and others.
The 25th Sun Cycle began in December 2019. Sun Cycle was created to be representative of the daily movement of the earth around the sun, with variations of strengths based on the current Sun Cycle. During the day, there is weak luminescence, but as soon as the sun goes down it becomes stronger and more vibrant. Sun Cycle was inspired by the cyclic buoyancy of Hannah Wu’s music -- a track that is both familiar yet evolving.
Visually representing the colours and cycles of the sky using LED strips, Chris' piece incorporates the viewer to reflect on the power of the sky.Viewers will see a feathering of colour along the wall, as well as reflections from the morphed shadows of themselves.
Process notes:
- To represent visually the cycle and colours of the sky
- Create an installation using LED strips and sourced metallic hemisphere
- The idea is to project colour onto a wall from behind the hemisphere
- Viewers are to see a feathering of colour along the wall, as well as reflections from the metallic hemisphere
- The reflection of the metal hemisphere creates morphed versions of the viewer incorporated with the colours of the sky cycle, to represent the power of the sky
Chris is a lighting designer currently working closely with The Capitol Theatre. His work reflects personal explorations with fragile purity. Chris is currently completing his Masters at UNSW.
This work was made on Boonwurrung and Woiworung land.
Holly’s recognised practice emerges through garments and accessories that are created to be worn, and loved. Therefore, Cloud Jacket is a wearable and tactile object for this exhibition.
My work is in response to Chris Forwood’s April Cycles; where he visually represents ‘the cycles and colours of the sky… (where) viewers are to see a gathering of colour along the wall, as well as reflections from the metallic hemisphere’
With HB Archive, my recognised practice is garments and accessories that created to be worn, and loved. Therefore, I have chosen to create a wearable object for this exhibition.
I watched Chris’ video before going to sleep and dreamt of a cloud like huge, puffy coat. Drawing inspiration from colours, shapes and the calmness of Chris’ work and reflecting on the current state of the world, my coat will be designed to feel like a wearable hug. Keeping in mind the final showing of this would be in an art space, the coat should stand up on its own (so to speak).
I’d like to induce a state of calm for the wearer / viewer. Dreamy colours inspired by the sky and in those in Chris’ work. In line with my work, I will use curved design lines and create interesting panelling, circles, etc.
First Thoughts - 01/05/2020
Main Intention: To be calming, relaxing, gentle, warm.
Thoughts for fabrics ~
Wool wadding inner – hand embroider objects within
Dressing/ robe gown style
Long to below the knee, self-covered buttons. Change colour as they go down. Super puffy cuffs and exaggerated collar
Tie at waist
Extra puff circle at centre back. Hand embroidered.
Make pattern pieces cut bigger than usual to allow for wadding.
Create a wire hanger – so it can spin on it’s own, but will look like it has a life of its own.
10/05/20
Image Play
Gradients created with images of the sky taken on my iphone.
Photos have been taken all around the world over multiple years.
Thinking about the word ‘Cycles’ and what it can physically represent:
Cycles around the earth, spending time in one place, travel, seasonal change, yet also feeling stagnant.
Working within personal constraints, self made routines, exercising small bursts of freedom.
Holly Banfield is the creative practitioner behind local clothing label HB Archive. HB Archive is a curation of carefully considered and created garments, and holds the intention to create a well fitting, sustainable and trans-seasonal wardrobe not influenced by current trends.
Holly gives special focus to natural fibres, basic colours, and consistent design lines. Everything is predominantly made to order and all designed, created and sewn, wrapped and posted by Holly in her Fitzroy, Melbourne studio.
This work was made on Boonwurrung and Woiworung land.
into a light filled cavern plays with ideas of doubles and dichotomies. Responding to the dynamic nature of Holly Banfield’s Cloud Jacket, Charmont responds to the creases and changes with light and shapes.
Through a process of rewinding the film and shooting over existing footage, the images are constructed by chance, creating an abstraction of flickering light, slow motion, spinning, and fragmented figures. into a light filled cavern was shot with intuition, as Charmont improvised in environments filled with light, reflections and shadows.
Veronica Charmont is an emerging artist who works primarily with super 8 and 16mm film. She aims to explore the illusionary and dream-like quality of the filmic image, with a focus on its ability to deceive the viewer through both mind and eye. The distinct materiality of celluloid film allows Charmont to construct vivid alternate worlds from what is typically considered reality, where the use of in-camera editing, grain, and light transform everyday urban environments into landscapes of the unfamiliar and imaginative. Throughout her practice she utilises various methods of improvisation in image and music, in order to create unpredictable outcomes within moments that cannot be replicated. Veronica graduated with Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2019 from the Victorian College of the Arts and was the recipient of the 2019 Majlis Travelling Scholarship.
This work was made on Boonwurrung and Woiworung land.
a thousand fibres makes a thread documents a series of conversations amongst three friends, taking place on bush land and childhood homes on Darug land. The piece explores the interconnectivity of healing amongst Asian diasporic settlers and First Nations people by championing solidarity and collectivity in these processes. By drawing links between relationship to place and histories of Asian-First Nation connections as a form of resistance, the piece opens space to collectively reimagine what a future for ourselves can look like.
Emma Harbridge is a mixed-race Chinese-Caucasian Australian emerging artist, who grew up on stolen and unceded Darug land (Granville) and is now currently living and practicing on Wangal and Gadigal land (Strathfield and Sydney). Her practice is mostly concerned with ideas of food as a form of healing, mutual aid, community and as a self-constructive tool for diasporic identity. She is also interested in interrogating the systems that make certain communities' labour invisible, and ultimately applies an anti-capitalist and decolonial lens to these interrogations. Emma's practice is inherently multi-disciplinary - she constantly moves across the mediums of moving image, sound, installation, performance, writing and drawing.
This work was made on Darug and Biddegal land.
Moving a Room is an instructional piece of writing, written to assist in creating components of home (or comfort) in multiple environments. The piece responds to Emma’s contemplations of connection to place, and is inspired by the use of symbolic elements in her work, as well as their portability. Moving a Room investigates how intention can be utilised to further our experiences and relationship with a place.
When making this piece I was thinking about my own connection to home environments and setting them up- including temporary ones while in transitional phases. This thought comes after settling into a new home following a period of being in said transitional phase (in which I would naturally conduct a minuscule version of what Moving A Room instructs upon each time I unpacked my bag).
Thank you to Ruby Tuvia for helping with the overlocking of Moving a Room.
I wanted the piece to feel like a recipe, but also read with ambiguity, and be open to interpretation - similar to lyrics or poetry.
Below is part of a letter I wrote to a friend after writing the first draft of the Moving a Room text which expands on the piece's origins and motives.
Zoe Baumgartner is a multidisciplinary designer and visual artist, utilising an approach that highlights collaboration and mixing mediums.
Her practise investigates human and non-human relationships, interactions, and reliances- exploring how they grow and develop, and why. Across Zoe's work she aims to visually represent ideas and projects. Employing the tools from both photography and design, Zoe's work strives to clarify and expand conversations surrounding visual communication.
This work was made on Peramangk and Gadigal land.
The three pieces are an installation of basic components of a room placed on wheels and moved about the gallery space each day, creating an endlessly transitionary room inside the gallery. It will become a stage set of sorts and alter the viewer’s experiences of the space and the work within. A door and a window on wheels suggest the most basic components of a room but also create an altered space within the gallery. The works remain passive and depersonalised to blend with the room, unquestioned and sturdy. The wheels on these usually fixed components act as plinths and transform the character of the work suggesting the portability of the room. This literally shifts understandings of space. It also shifts understandings of the individual in relation to components of a room, a relationship that is both deeply personal and completely universal as everyone who enters a room is faced with their reaction to the room’s components. These components will be constantly changing in the gallery, allowing a shifting personal understanding of space.
The work is a response to Zoe’s Moving A Room. Like Zoe, I too have been moving my room, setting up transitional spaces and trying to find warmth in new spaces as my location changes. Originally, I wanted to reflect the personal quality of Zoe’s work with my own. Ideas of home and looking in to what made up home were at the fore front of my research . But lately, having just moved back into my room, a room that had been vacant for 6 months, I have found it hard to connect with the objects that used to make my room home. I have found myself leaving boxes unpacked, clothes on the floor and only interacting with the basic, necessary elements of the room: the door, the window, the bed, the washing basket, the floor, the chair. So here I focus on these basic elements because they have been the most familiar and reliable components of the room.
I am still unsure whether I should instil personal components in the works such as a curtain on the window or installing a windowsill like my own under the window work. This would make them no longer passive components of the room but personalise them. With personal memorabilia they become characters and individual. I still don’t know which road I should take. So far I’m leaning towards the passive, but that could change.
The idea of objects on wheels came almost immediately as the symbol of portability, a word that stood out in Zoe’s document of her work. The ability to alter, move, transport, change, raise an object was fascinating to me. They also become a plinth of sorts. The juxtaposition of something solid on wheels was to me a way to shift understandings of space and understandings of the basic components of a room; what we ask from a room, what it is expected to deliver.
Marianna Ebersoll uses clay to form understandings of the world surrounding her. She draws on components of ceramic practice, ritual, memory, touch and time to highlight their quiet existence within daily life. Using harvested materials from her home environment, Marianna’s works and installations create visual connections and rhythms between her relationship with clay and her relationship with her surroundings. Within these works, objects begin to emit poetic resonance with themselves and the viewer, creating spaces that honour both the ceramic language and its context within the world.
This work was made on Gadigal land.