Sediment features aeolian harp-sculptures created from antique surveyors’ tripods sourced from a local agricultural college played by the wind within a retired quarry and activated by Australian pythons. The resonance from the harps remains raw, with the sound unaltered, capturing the essence of the elements and connecting with country in regional Victoria.
The tripods are relics from a bygone era, once used to measure and map the landscape. This cross-elemental performance activates natural forces, while reflecting on place and cartographic memory. The energy generated by the wind vibrates the harp strings, giving presence of the site’s dynamic natural qualities and acoustics, seeing the landscape itself as a collaborator.
Snakes personify how the artist views the Australian landscape, with the dual interpretation of being simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. Sediment explores how sound may be translated to an animal. A python hears via vibrations through its skin, enabling a truly embodied sonic experience.
A python’s jaw unhinges in order to ingest prey many times its size and it smells through a flickering forked tongue. Such uncanny abilities associate snakes with terrifying variance and forces that galvanise the human verses nature divide. A simple S-shape may conjure culturally entrenched serpentine symbolism, emblematic of malevolent danger, mythologies, deities and sacred beings.
Sediment conjures deeper and universal relationships between visual language and myth making to reveal how serpents are transformed within aesthetic-cultural fields and to examine the postmodern animal as performer.
Performers
Basil the Albino Python (Morelia Spilota Varigate)
Banjo the Carpet Python (Morelia Spilota Variegate)
Lara the Olive Python (Liasis Olivaceus)
DP: Gene Alberts
Colourist: Nicholas Andrews
Herpetologist: Michael Alexander
