the art life

Please join us for a collaborative improvised performance by Pia van Gelder (Sydney) on original Voice Mask with some members of her Orchestra of Machines together with James Hullick (Melb) on robotic sound sculptures and instrumental automata. This will be the first collaboration between Pia and James and it's bound to be a stunner. All welcome!





PIA VAN GELDER is a Sydney-based electronic artist. In constructing her orchestra of machines and instruments for generating audio and video signals she uses a variety of materials including solenoids, contact microphones, cello-tape, reconstructed records, cassette tapes, guitar pedals, micro-controllers, general household refuse, pieces of two-by-four, midi-controllers, sensors, samplers, surveillance cameras, her mouth, nose, feet and hands. Her work currently involves sample-based live improvisation in collaboration with musician Eden Falk in their group Praying Hands and a solo project called Voice Mask, an audio instrument for vocal performance. She is the Overlord for Dorkbot_Sydney, a regular meet-up for 'people doing strange things with electricity'. www.piavangelder.com

JAMES HULLICK is a Melbourne-based composer, vocalist, pianist and sound artist who makes installations, sonic constructions and midi-controlled robotics. His sound works have been presented in Asia, North America, Australia and Europe for a variety of ensembles. Most recently he directed the multimedia experience/sonic performance The Nis, performed at 45 Downstairs, Melbourne, in partnership with Footscray Community Arts Centre and the Amplified Elephants. He is currently researching the phenomenon of 'Recursion' for his PhD at RMIT. www.jameshullick.com




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Dear friend,

On May 22 the exhibition There Goes The Neighbourhood will open at Performance Space, Sydney. The book There Goes The Neighbourhood: Redfern and the Politics of Urban Space will be launched on the same night with an opening speech by Gary Foley. Both these projects have been organised by You Are Here a Sydney based art collective initiated by Keg de Souza and myself.

There Goes the Neighbourhood was the ironic chorus to the 1992 Body Count song which lamented the invasion of the once poor (and Black) into the neighbourhood of the rich (and white). But an alternative destruction of “The Neighbourhood” can happen when the poor get pushed out of their local community as part of the process of gentrification. This issue is particularly relevant for the suburb of Redfern, an inner city suburb of Sydney which has been home for a large working class and Indigenous community, and which is undergoing a process of rapid development and change. There Goes the Neighborhood is an exhibition, residency, discussion and publishing project for May 2009. The central element of this project will be an exploration of the politics of urban space. It will explore the complex life of cities and how the phenomenon of gentrification is altering the relationship between democracy and demography around the world.

A small number of Australian and international artists have been invited to participate in the project including: Brenda L Croft (Australia), 16beaver (USA), Daniel Boyd (Australia), Temporary Services (USA), Jakob Jakobsen (Denmark), Lisa Kelly (Australia), SquatSpace (Australia), Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro (Germany/Australia), Evil Brothers (Ned and Tom Sevil, Australia), You Are Here (Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg, Australia), Michael Rakowitz (USA), Miklos Erhardt and Little Warsaw (Hungary), Bijari (Brazil), Democracia (Spain) and a re-enactment of Allan Kaprow's Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann 1963 (with thanks to the Allan Kaprow Estate).

Labels: exhibitions, press releases

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 11:06 AM.