Inspired by pioneer multimedia performance artist Joan Jonas and her assertion that the natural elements in her works, “take on a character,” Sediment White Cube views the landscape as a collaborator. The project sees aeolian harp-sculptures, created from local antique surveyors’ tripods, played by the wind within a retired quarry in regional Victoria and activated by Australian pythons. 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 to the piercing essence of the site’s dynamic natural qualities and acoustics. The resonance from the harps remains unaltered to sonically connect with country through multisensory nonhuman performance.
All colour has been stripped from the screen to create a monochromatic palette, allowing for the moving image to be projected onto, and blend into, a white wall. This layering has a dual function – firstly to challenge the white cube interior of typical gallery formats by integrating art and the environment more organically and secondly to acknowledge that the gallery itself holds the history of the earth beneath it.
The gallery, too, becomes an active participant in the reading of the artwork, further merging the conventional boundaries between art and nature. The pigmented digital embossment of the imagery offers a tactile dimension to the visual experience, raising certain aspects of the image and creating a relief effect.
Sediment White Cube is an endeavour to embrace collaboration with the natural world. It incorporates the sonic qualities of wind, harp strings, sculptures, pythons and the gallery itself to create a multi-elemental performance that reflects on the interplay between nature, culture and history. The project aims to capture the essence of its environment through sound and moving image, while reimagining the role of the gallery in the artistic outcome and process.