“GW Bot creates her own language of visual signifiers through what she terms “glyphs”. These mark the movement of life upon the landscape, most predominantly represented through the gnarled silhouettes of trees. In Fallen Glyph II it was important for the choice of sound to complement the stillness of the print. The subtle balance between the quiet moon and lone figures needed to be reflected in its auditory companion. The audio includes nocturnal field recordings of insects, a slight wind, and orchestral strings. To connect Fallen Glyph II with Matins, Glyphs - Song of the Morning I continued the composition of a classical score. As the sun rises in the Matins, Glyphs - Song of the Morning ascending arpeggios are played on the piano. They are intended to follow the passage of the rising sun, as well as they the line of the hill. It is an imagined dawn chorus, as the title of the work suggests.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“Jan Davis is a gardener who recognises similarities in the discipline required in the studio and in the garden - the planning, the labour, the pleasure, and the documentation. Her aesthetic pursuits in the studio also have their reflection in the architecture of house and land and a relationship to the manner in which her house sits in the garden. A residency at Gunalan International Printmaking Base (China) delivered Davis a studio with an extensive view of their vegetable garden. The colour and brushwork in the art of horticulture I and the art of horticulture II show the influence of
Chinese ceramics. Both prints exude a sense of fecundity. I wanted to enhance this through the addition of field recordings taken in local gardens. Viewing the prints we hear the sounds of garden life: the chatter of small birds, flying insects, frogs, a small stream. I also included manipulated recordings of Chinese chimes, drums, and bowls to lightly acknowledge the geographic context of the prints.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“Graham Fransella’s Head on Rust and Head in Landscape portray anonymous figures in an unknown time and place. With such contextual information removed the viewer is left with work that states the presence of the artist through a series of marks and lines. There is a tension in Fransella’s composition that needed to be matched when adding audio. Hence the audio accompaniments for Head on Rust and Head in Landscape are studies in maintaining a balance between space and sound. Viewing Head in Landscape I imagined the drone of a hot dry wind with dissonant tones reflecting distant waves of heat radiating from the earth. The wind in Head in Landscape also passes through the landscape in Head on Rust. Here I’ve chosen to use more metallic sounding tones to conjure images of objects that have been left to warp and disintegrate in the elements.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“Rona Green is well known for her hand coloured linocuts of hybrid figures. King of Punchbowl and Nastja exemplify her interest in the world of people living on society’s edge. Green creates characters who identify themselves through visual markers such as tattoos. One of the strongest auditory markers of personality is music. Both of Green’s prints are therefore connected through styles of music that I imagined her characters identified with. Thus King of Punchbowl’s protagonist is an urban creature whose passions are hip-hop culture. The auditory companion features hiphop music and finishes with his attempt to phone Nastja. I chose to position Nastja in a nightclub dancing to house music. Her enjoyment of the evening is repeatedly interrupted by the phone calls from the King of Punchbowl’s protagonist.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“The work of Alexi Keywan can be identified through her etched silhouettes of quotidian urban scenes. This is shown to a powerful effect in her Burden series. In Burden of Hope and Burden of Desire billboards rise above the horizon and dominate the urban landscape. In both works I was interested in the way in which the addition of sound could create a sense of the street-life moving underneath the billboards. In Burden of Hope the addition of field recordings at a train station positions the billboard into a very specific urban location. Keywan’s billboard remains a strong and constant fixture as trains move beyond the perimeter platform. Similarly in Burden of Desire the billboard stays fixed while the blurred waves of traffic noise pass below it. The processing of this sound was done to complement the trails seen in Keywan’s hazy sky.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“The hooded hawks in Martin King’s Silent Witness and Four Quarters provide a disembodied narrative loaded with evocative symbolism. In King’s prints the hawks appear contradictory. They are at once powerful yet vulnerable, wild yet restrained. The symbolism of the hooded hawk dates back to ancient Egypt. At the time it represented hope for those who lived in the shadows. I felt the audio needed to acknowledge this Arabic heritage. This is extended in Four Quarters where I manipulated samples of Middle Eastern instruments. In Silent Witness I worked with violin samples - the ascending and descending movements portray a sense of tension by flitting between tones of darkness and light.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“Bruce Latimer’s etchings present dreamlike combinations of human artefacts placed in incongruous settings. They are filled with sonic possibilities. Sleeping Bag is a nocturnal scene merging images of real objects, a fountain and a sleeping bag, amongst a number of fig tree roots. It is as though we are quietly floating in the layers of Latimer’s subconscious. The sounds accompanying this therefore needed to be equally as subtle. Rather than include real field recordings of a forest at night I decided to extend Latimer’s artifice by working with synthesised sound. I created high-pitched wavering tones and then mixed them with small tinkling beats. The contrast in sounds move the listener between the imagined life that exists on the forest floor and the air circulating through the forest canopy. Heart Throb depicts a beehive attached to a banksia tree. As the title suggests, the hive appears to be a heart throbbing independently from its surrounds. In this work I added sound to suggest life beyond the scope of the print. Viewing the print we now hear the rumble of thunder int he distance and insects gnawing their way through the tree bark. The focus shifts away from the heart to the structure supporting its growth.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“Uncertainties, imperfections, limitations and chance are some of the attractions that photographing with Polaroid film has for Travis Paterson. The Lambda prints Entropy and once are comprised of large scans of Polaroid originals. Entropy shows a partial view of a skull. Marked by a flaw in the film’s emulsion that sits in contrast with the corporeal pinks it becomes an inviting memento mori. once is a self-portrait concentrating on a detail of his person: a tattoo of a portrait of a blindfolded man. This tattoo presents, among other things, ideas around knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty, a faith in oneself tempered with doubt. Paterson has said “as the image began to develop it slowly revealed that it wasn’t going to turn out as I had planned. Instead the man became more like a boy, a ghost of my young queer self and this self-portrait became more than I was expecting”. Both are ambiguous portraits that speak of loss and longing. In each work a needle reaches the end of a record, its beat signals finality. Entropy incorporates the evocative sound of church organs to enhance the print’s theme of death and decay while once uses an audio-technique called back-masking in order to emulate the developing process of Polaroid film.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator

“Melissa Smith prints with traditional and new technologies in order to portray the way in which climate change is affecting the landscape at both a local and global level. Tidal Sweep II depicts the sea and landscape of Deal Island in Bass Strait. It is an isolated place whose character shifts with the ever-changing weather. The audio uses a combination of field recordings taken from the Tasmanian shoreline and processed tones that emulate the movement of currents around the island. In Weathervane a 100 year old poplar tree sways in the wind. According to Smith the tree acts as a marker for the local weather. More significantly it also reflects the changes happening in our global weather system. For the accompanying audio piece I moved the position of the viewer to within the tree itself. Through the use of specialised microphones the listener hears the deep reverberation of wind passing over the tree. As the wind intensifies, we hear the sound of snow falling on its branches.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator