This exhibition brings together practices that explore material connection - transitory and elemental. Sung from the Throat offers a dialogue between divergent yet similar practices, presenting multiple artistic pitches/tones simultaneously. Rather than a singular narrative, the exhibition embraces a polyphonic structure, allowing each artwork to resonate with and amplify the themes present in others.
In 1994 I happened upon a CD of Tuvan throat singing ‘Voices From The Distant Steppe” SHU_DE released through Peter Gabriel’s record label Real World Records. As a young listener, the whistling and guttural harmonies took me from Melbourne to the steppe. This was back when you had to really take a chance on something musical in an analog way- reading reviews. Is there something that I’ll like? It’s not rock music? It’s not grunge it’s not American. Gabriel as a white man recognised the importance of world music - for me at that moment here in Melbourne still isolated it was a revelation. There’s a world out there and a world of differences. Rich differences. Music as Art should be is an avenue to tap into these differences.
Sounds produced from the throat - the idea of the voice in the throat - the throat is the instrument. Sung from the throat is a title I pinched from a diary entry by Moki Cherry. Cherry describes travelling in Morocco and hearing singing by a river - ‘sung from the throat’
The shamanistic drone produce by the Tuvan musicians has stuck with me as an artist and a curator. The idea of polyphonic structured ‘noises’ resonates within combining artists in ‘group show’ settings. The artists I put together for this show are in the immediate of resonation.
Storm Gold
Anna Fiedler’s practice utilises the process of weaving to remove the boundaries surrounding traditional craft making. Her woven objects attempt to re-deduce their fixity between both craft and new materialism. Interlacing materials and themes from the past and present, Anna fosters a connection to her environment, weaving the old and the new with natural fibres and recycled materials. Her woven paintings are unbounded; finding a criticality within the process, softening differences between process and outcome.
Dell Stewart’s work combines various processes often regarded as belonging to the world of craft (ceramics, textiles, animation) with a deeply embedded personal history. These practices and references assemble in immersive environments, often offering no clue to the boundary between the artwork and the space it occupies. A personal, subjective symbology pervades the work making each iteration another chapter in a narrative of a life lived doing. Stewart has organised and participated in numerous exhibitions, and has shown extensively in Australia and overseas – recently at West Space and Craft Victoria – with a particular interest in fostering new material connections and collaboration.
Dylan Marelić is a Naarm-based artist focusing on environmental storytelling through sculpture, 3D animation, sound, and immersive installations. Using found materials and waste, they create poetic reflections on overlooked human-made and natural phenomena. Dylan has exhibited at BLINDSIDE, Hair Ari, and CAVES gallery.
Oliver Hull works across digital media, sculpture and installation. He is interested in the poetic and political properties of images and computation and their relationship to time, nature and landscape. His work usually begins with research into places or events where these categories knit, often using digital tools to track, model, simulate and sense as techniques to draw out the political and/or poetic within the subject matter. Hull has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally in institutional, artist run, online and offsite settings.
Richard Grigg is an artist with an exacting art practice that spans drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. In his work, there is an experimental tendency that aims to find the medium that best suits the idea. This has led him to work with plaster, resin, clay, wood, concrete, fabric, tempera, and found objects, educating himself in the practical requirements of each. He works in a figurative manner, divining meaning in ridiculous combinations of symbols, finding strange comedy in ritual groupings—birds with planes, floating apples with flames. As an arts practitioner, he has had numerous exhibitions at major institutions such as Heide, CCP, and Canberra Contemporary Art Space, as well as artist-run initiatives Bus, Kings, and TCB Gallery. He has also been a finalist in the Mornington Peninsula WOP Prize and the Paul Guest Drawing Prize, as well as having participated in overseas residencies.