Arts House announce SPECTRAL installations and performances
Arts House has built a new transmission of Spectral – a series of immersive installations and performances that dive into the interruptions created when sound and light collide.
After the resounding success of the 2019 Spectral premiere, this dynamic project returns to offer audiences the chance to experience the phenomena of light and sound in a variety of forms.
Arts House Artistic Director, Emily Sexton says, “All the works in Spectral demand to be experienced – they will capture the mind and mesmerise our aural and visual senses. We will entertain audiences at our free exhibitions and installations as well as our entrancing gig that won’t be quickly forgotten.”
As part of his widely-acclaimed power of one series, Japanese artist: Shohei Fujimoto will premiere #distortion – a new 3D illumination commission for Spectral alongside two other recent hypnotic and transporting works: #point and #surface / test pattern 2.
Riddled with surprises within the confines of the Arts House lift, Sydney-based artist: Del Lumanta will redeem Muzak with an unexpected cozy elevator-based sound installation: Wallpaper III & IV.
Spectral will climax with Spectral: Live – a riveting one-night only gig that that brings together House of Vnholy, Robert Curgenven with Kat McDowall and Sui Zhen making this a global bill of artists who offer unique sound and light offerings.
Known for their transcendent events that sculpt light, video and sound, Melbourne-based experimental art collective: House of Vnholy will lead audiences down a strange experiential rabbit hole as they adapt SEER, which premiered in 2018 at Next Wave.
Ireland-based, Australian-born artist: Robert Curgenven and Kat McDowall have created AGENESIS – a sound and light work that emphasises peoples embodied responses to sound.
Drawing on influences as broad as Sade, early 80s electronic music to bossa nova and synth, Sui Zhen’s work explores themes of identity, avatars as well as digital and virtual life – it’s a surreal, electronic sound with a dreamlike quality that is often described as vivid and ethereal.
Spectral: Live will be an energising finale to a week that emphasises how art can alter the senses through the visceral interface between sound and light.
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power of one by Shohei Fujimoto
2 – 9 April 2020
#distortion [2020 – World premiere]
#point [2019]
#surface / test pattern 2 [2019]
From cathedrals of light to the most fleeting of flickers, Japanese artist Shohei Fujimoto’s luminescent installations dramatise the opposition of chaos and order with startling results.
Abstract in nature and minimalist in form they reveal elaborate and invisible systems that underlie our reality, making visible the powerful forces that shape our every moment.
Fujimoto’s work has been shown widely in Japan as well as Europe, America and the Middle East, and for Spectral he presents three of the most recent installations in his widely acclaimed power of one series.
power of one #point is a deconstructed disco ball for the 21st century – it transforms a darkened room into a dazzling explosion of rapidly shifting light shapes.
power of one #surface/test pattern 2 is an accordion of mirrors whose depths become the playing space for a serpentine dance of irradiated lasers. Shapes will leap in and out of existence as the certainty of dimensions falls away and perspective becomes a most unreliable guide.
In a coup for Melbourne, Arts House will play host to the world premiere of the latest in Fujimoto’s ongoing exploration into sound and light – power of one #distortion will offer another glimpse beyond the boundaries of the visible.
#distortion – created by Shohei Fujimoto
#point – created by Shohei Fujimoto and sound Ray Kunimoto
#surface / test pattern 2 – created by Shohei Fujimoto and sound by Ray Kunimoto
Season 2 – 9 Apr 2020
Times
12 – 6pm Mon – Fri,
11am – 4pm Sat – Sun
Duration Enter these works at any time and stay as long as you want
Location Arts House
Address North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne
Tickets FREE – no bookings required
Information artshouse.com.au or (03) 9322 3720
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Wallpaper III & IV by Del Lumanta
2 – 9 April 2020
Our cities once sang to us. In elevators and lobbies, concourses and restaurants the compositions sneeringly dubbed Muzak sought to provide a soundtrack to our lives without attracting our attention.
The challenge to composers was to make music that would go unnoticed, but today music fanatics around the world study and collect these curious artefacts of aural camouflage.
Del Lumanta’s Wallpaper series explores the untapped potential of background music in our everyday environments.
Take an elevator ride and listen to these site-specific works that treat sound as material, responding to and synthesizing the histories and recent events of Arts House and the North Melbourne Town Hall.
‘Elevator music’ has variously been used to manipulate mindsets, relax commuters, sculpt spending habits and encourage productivity – could these unreal echoes of a place outside of time be used to create connections instead?
A Sydney-based artist, musician, DJ, educator and organiser, Del Lumanta welcomes participants to listen to the sound of the city we were never supposed to hear.
Created by Del Lumanta
Season 2 – 9 Apr 2020
Times
12 – 6pm Mon – Fri,
11am – 4pm Sat – Sun
Duration 35 mins – enter this works at any time and stay as long as you want
Location Arts House lift
Address North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne
Tickets FREE – no bookings required
Information artshouse.com.au or (03) 9322 3720
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Spectral: Live
featuring SEER by House of Vnholy; AGENESIS by Robert Curgenven with Kat McDowal and Sui Zhen + band.
9 April 2020
From immersive interruptions that capture the mind, to synaesthetic voyages beyond the boundaries of the body, Spectral: Live takes you into the spaces between sound and light.
With a night of performances from local and international artists, this gig was the sold-out hit of last year’s Arts House calendar – this year’s edition won’t be quickly forgotten.
House of Vnholy will be no stranger to those with an interest in the cutting edge of experimental performance. For Spectral: Live the pioneering outfit presents SEER – it’s a visually stunning and haunting performance of the afterlife and a poetic meditation on the rituals of death and dying.
House of Vnholy’s trademark sculptural light and video installation are accompanied by a sound composition by 2019 Spectral artist: Jannah Quill and the haunting live soprano voice of Judith Dodsworth.
Bridging the gulf between the aural, visual and physical, Robert Curgenven and Kat McDowall’s new sound and light work AGENESIS explores our embodied response to sound.
Curgenven’s works and installations have graced esteemed venues across the globe from the National Gallery of Australia to Palazzo Grassi in Venice. His live performances explore sound’s relationship to architectural contexts, weather as well as the physical transmission of sound through air.
Possessing a surreal, electronic sound with a dreamlike quality, Sui Zhen is an experimental pop and performance artist, whose performance possesses a surreal, electronic sound with a dreamlike quality.
Drawing on influences as broad as Sade, early 80s electronic music to bossa nova and synth, Zhen’s work explores themes of identity, avatars as well as digital and virtual life.
SEER – created by House of Vnholy, conceived, designed and directed by Matthew Adey and Andre Vanderwert, sound by Jannah Quill, soprano performance by Judith Dodsworth and costume by Benjamin Hancock
AGENESIS – created by Robert Curgenven and Kat McDowall
Season 9 Apr 2020
Time 8pm – 11.30pm
Location Arts House
Address North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne
Tickets $10 – $30 (plus transaction fee)
Bookings artshouse.com.au or (03) 9322 3720
