#blindside gallery

[caitlincharlotte-blog]

THE NICHOLAS BUILDING - Couturing.com

Nestled between Arthur Daley’s Clearance house and Subway on Swanston Street lies the Cathedral Arcade in The Nicholas Building. Venture up one flight of stairs, and you’ll arrive at the iconic vintage clothing store RetroStar. Venture up one flight further, and you’ll enter a quiet haven hidden above the bustling streets of Melbourne. To enter The Nicholas …

[huishengchang]

31 JULY – 2 AUGUST | 

SOUND SERIES | PERCH | 

Catherine Clover with Vanessa Tomlinson and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang

OPENING with occasional performances 

Thursday 31 JULY 6-8pm 

PERFORMANCES

Friday 1 Aug 6.30pm

Sat 2 Aug 7.19am (sunrise)

Sat 2 Aug 5.33pm (sunset)

[sound-art-text]

Tracts - group sound exhibition in Melbourne

Tracts - 22 May to 6 June 2008 - Blindside Gallery 

curated by Ben Byrne:

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Tracts is a group show of sound installations at Melbourne's Blindside Gallery that examines the role of sound in the world. The exhibition explores how sound can shape our understandings of our surroundings and ourselves, bringing into question the nature of space within a gallery and the role of the subject in experience. Assembled by several of Australia's premier emerging sound artists, the exhibition invites the audience to enter, surround, and interact with the installations.

Inspired by German architect Friedrich Kiesler's interest in the interrelationships between people culture and space, with a particular focus on the role of sound in this regard, the exhibition presents four individual installation works, all of which create singular spaces in the gallery while at the same time intermingling with one another, their environment and their subjects. In encountering each work, the line between audience, artwork and gallery blurs, challenging us to confront the continuity that exists between all three as well as, more broadly, art and life itself.

Tracts is curated by Ben Byrne. Former director of the Electrofringe and Liquid Architecture festivals Ben is an electronic musician, improvisor and artist currently undertaking a PhD on the nature of sound. The show also features the work of Adam Costenoble (Sydney), Matt Chaumont (Sydney) and Thembi Soddell (Melbourne). Musicians and gallery artists, Adam Costenoble and Matt Chaumont have both received Helen Lempriere Art Prize Awards, alongside Thembi Soddell who has released several albums and most recently performed at the Melbourne International Biennale of Exploratory Music. This show is a part of the 2008 NEXT WAVE Festival 15th – 31st May

www.nextwave.org.au

Venue: Blindside Gallery, Level 7, Room 14, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston

St, Melbourne

Enter via lifts in Cathedral Arcade Cnr Flinders Lane

Opening: Thu 22nd May, 6 PM – 9 PM

Dates: 22nd May –7th June (Not Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays)

Times: 12 PM – 6 PM

[sound-art-text]

WINDOW : 2008 

Thembi Soddell

Window was exhibited at Blindside Gallery in Melbourne 2008 in a group sound exhibition, Tracts, curated by Ben Byrne for the Next Wave Festival. The catalogue information was as follows:

"At first I wondered why the room felt so safe. Then I realized it was because there were no windows." Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Window is a small, black, nondescript box, which the audience must enter to experience. Pulling aside a curtain on one side of the box, one person at a time sits in its centre (in so much as they can fit), pulling the curtain back down so their head and body is enclosed in the pitch-black space. Sound becomes their only point of reference, filling the space from 10 hidden speakers (and 2 subwoofers) placed at varying heights and distances within the box, in a unique configuration for sound spatialisation. Through this, the listener becomes immersed in a sonic world that shifts from the real to the imagined via fragments of field recordings, electronics and abstracted sounds. This sonically sculpted space ranges in intensity, from dense washes of noise, to sounds on the threshold of perception, mimicking the manifestation of memory and emotion.