This old farm shed stands on an open stretch of paddock between the vivid colours of a household garden and the more muted shades of a remnant patch of native forest. A preference in domestic gardening for exotic and spectacular plant forms recurs across Tasmania, threatening the survival of some indigenous species, performing another colonisation of country. Contemporary landscapes play out such tensions in an ongoing riot of colour, texture and form as different life forms attempt to assert their own trajectories across space and time. This series of images projected onto the shed were all captured from the environment around it.
This short movie (2014) records images projected at night onto a rusty old hay barn in rural Tasmania. A response to the place in which it was made and shown, the piece invites reflection on time as rhythmic and spiralling, manifest in the repeating cycles of rural life supported and disrupted by the vagaries of weather. In this instance, a westerly gale unleashes its forces across the paddocks of ripe grass just on the eve of harvest.
This is part documentation of a sound installation completed in 2007 for a practice-led PhD in creative media. Australian public broadcast news and journalistic critique were sampled throughout 2004 and edited down to make an intense story story space that captured the zeitgeist of the time, the politics of fear and retribution. Playlists of sound bytes were installed on an ensemble of seven iPods around a black box space defined by a large labyrinth made from reflective tape. The audience navigated this space with small torches.
Just west of Canberra, the burnt-out shell of the Mt Stromlo Observatory - destroyed by bushfire in 2003 - is an evocative setting for Eric's extraordinary interplay of expressive forms through violin, composing, dance and song. Eric is an artist of Ngiyampaa, Yuin, Bandjalang and Gumbangirr heritage.
This piece was developed as part of the ASTRO 3D project, a science/arts interaction initiated by Ingrid McCarthy and directed by Liz Lea.
Video filming and production Jen Brown in collaboration with Eric Avery, August 2019.
Thanks to Hilton Flanagan for the starry sky photograph.
