NOISE

By Carrie Miller

A new exhibition at Penrith Regional Gallery doesn’t appear to be about art at all. It takes as its starting point the idea that music – often considered a secondary art form – is a legitimate form of art to be ‘exhibited’ in a traditional gallery context. Placing the emphasis on music this way is in line with recent developments in the exhibition of art where cross-disciplinary practice or the harnessing of different art forms in new ways is becoming more and more common.

NOISE assumes commonality between visual arts and music as creative practices. And in an online world where people have access to all manner of art forms, there is increased blurring of the boundaries between them. All this means is that now music has a home in traditional gallery settings.

A first-rate group of internationally recognised musicians were invited to create a composition that related specifically to an artwork in the Gallery’s collection. Musicians  included are Jim White (Dirty Three) & George Xylouris; Tom Ellard (Severed Heads); Jack Ladder; Io Echo; Eddie Muliaumaseali’I; Kirin J. Callinan & Daniel Stricker (Midnight Juggernauts); Castratii; Tim McPhee, Barton Staggs and Matthew Doyle.

These musicians were able to choose from the impressive Gallery collection which consists of contemporary and Indigenous artworks as well as paradigmatic works of Modernism, Abstract Expressionism, Hard Edge Abstraction and Minimalism from the 1930s to 1970s.

The result is a unique exhibition where the music styles – from opera to folk to industrial to neo-classical – are brought together in a focused way in the gallery space, transforming the act of listening to music in its standard context to an act of focused ‘viewing’.

Until June 23

Penrith Regional Gallery and the Lewers Bequest

http://www.penrithregionalgallery.org

Pic: Ralph Balson,The Construction…Transparent Planes, 1942. Oil on board, 68.5 x 90 cm