Alluvial Gold

Alluvial Gold is a 50-minute performance-installation work for percussion, sculptural instruments, field recordings, electronics and projection by percussionist Louise Devenish, composer Stuart James and visual artist Erin Coates to draw audiences into the often-forgotten and changing worlds below river surfaces.

About the work

Alluvial Gold is a 50-minute performance-installation work for percussion, sculptural instruments, field recordings, electronics and projection by percussionist Louise Devenish, composer Stuart James and visual artist Erin Coates to draw audiences into the often-forgotten and changing worlds below river surfaces. Alluvial Gold takes the histories, materials and ecology of our metropolitan rivers as a point of departure. During the European settlement establishments and in the decades that followed, native shellfish reefs within Australian rivers such as the Derbarl Yerrigan (WA) were heavily dredged and ground up for mortar, roads and building materials at sites across the city. Similar histories of dredging, changing estuarine ecology and the impacts of human intervention took place in river systems across southern Australia, particularly in areas used as ports or trading routes following European colonisation.

The music in Alluvial Gold explores the confluence of multiple narratives connected to rivers, from the phenomenological and structural aspects of river systems and water, the devastating impact of industrialisation after European colonisation, the sonic ecology and chemistry of larger river systems, and a musical language derived from transcriptions of sounds of the river system itself. This material forms a temporal narrative through a changing sound world and aesthetic, explored in nine intersecting movements. In each movement, different combinations of sculptural percussion instruments modelled on dolphin bones, native oyster shells and estuarine ecology are brought together with vibraphone, percussion and electronics to create a tapestry of sonic material. When struck, the bronze and porcelain bones produce light, sparkling clusters of harmonics, while a specific pitch set of crotales, ceramic and metal bowls extend the otherwise pure sound world of the vibraphone and sine tones. These instruments and others created for this work, are nestled in front of a large, sonified oystershell curtain fitted with sensors used to trigger electronic audio. The electronics comprises both processed audio samples of these percussive instruments and hydrophone river recordings capturing sounds at the riverbed and surface: air bubbles, shell rustles, crustacean movements, shifting algae, moss and plants. Together, these layers of notated, improvised and recorded material create a mysterious world of floating sounds that spin off one another.

Glimpses of the changing world beneath the surface are projected via underwater video and audio recordings, which are mapped around the space during the performance. Capturing the riverbed and surface, as well as air bubbles, shell, crustacean, algae, moss and plants, the performance space is saturated in both the sonic and the visual, offering an otherwise hidden perspective of what is below the surface.

Video showreels

Artistic team

  • Louise Devenish: co-creator, director, performer
  • Pete Young: production manager
  • Stuart James: co-creator, composition, sound design
  • Tristen Parr: development producer (Tura)
  • Erin Coates: co-creator, video, sculptural instruments
  • Bruce McKinven: set design
  • Mia Holton: projection design
  • (*only 3 in touring party)

Biographies

Dr Louise Devenish is a contemporary percussionist whose creative practice blends performance, collaboration and artistic research. As a soloist and with ensembles including acclaimed electroacoustic sextet Decibel, percussive research studio The Sound Collectors Lab, and perc-piano-bassclarinet trio Intercurrent, she develops new works exploring performance, notation and collaborative creativity, performing around Australasia, Europe, North America and UK, at festivals including MONA FOMA, Nagoya and Shanghai World Expos, Ojai Music Festival, Tage für Neue Musik, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Perth Festival, and Tongyeong International Music Festival. Louise has commissioned over 50 works, and her performances are acknowledged for ‘interpretive flair and technical brilliance’. She has collaborated on internationally distributed recordings with her ensembles and others including Speak Percussion and Synergy Percussion, released on HatArt, Listen/Hear, Immediata, Innova and room40, as well as her debut album music for percussion and electronics on Tall Poppies. Most recently, at the 2020 APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards, she won Performance of the Year Award for solo project Sheets of Sound, and the WA Luminary Award. Louise is Senior Research Fellow and Percussion Coordinator at Monash University, where she is undertaking a prestigious Australian Research Council Fellowship (DECRA) in artistic research. She is a Churchill Fellow, and recently published her book Global Percussion Innovations: An Australian Perspective (2019). Previously, Louise founded and directed Piñata Percussion at The University of Western Australia, where she was Senior Lecturer and Chair of Percussion (2013-2019).
www.louisedevenish.com.au

Dr Stuart James is an award-winning Western Australian-based composer, performer, sound designer, audio engineer, and producer. Originally mentored by Allison Applebaum (USA), Anthony Payne (UK), Roger Smalley (UK/AUS), Nigel Butterly (AUS), and Lindsay Vickery (AUS), his compositional work explores both acoustic and electronic instruments. His compositions have been commissioned and performed by the ABC, Decibel, WASO New Music Ensemble, TaikOz, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Michael Kieran Harvey, and have been recorded and released on Tall Poppies and the ABC. James is a founding member of Decibel New Music ensemble, and has performed with this ensemble throughout Europe and Asia. Stuart currently works as Lecturer in composition and music technology at the WA Academy of Performing Arts, and operates his own commercial recording studio, The Soundfield Studio, where he has collaborated and recorded with artists across all genres such as ShockOne (UK/AUS), Kele Okereke of Bloc Party (UK), JMSN (USA), Jac Dalton (USA), Timmy Trumpet (AUS), Ta-ku (AUS), Lachlan Skipworth (AUS), The Sound Collectors (AUS) and Loston (AUS). Stuart holds a PhD in spatial audio, spectral synthesis, and wave terrain synthesis research, and has continued to publish regularly on music technology. Stuart was recently awarded an ECR grant to research how 3D sound can potentially be used to assist in human navigation, and how newly emergent technologies are now facilitating the potential for exploring virtual environments. www.soundfieldstudio.com/stuart-james

Erin Coates is a visual artist and creative producer working across film, sculptural installation and drawing. Coates’ practice examines our relationship with and within the spaces we build and inhabit, focusing on the limits of our bodies and physical interaction within given environments. Coates’ recent work has explored underwater spaces to look at human physical thresholds and subtly allude to humanity's evolutionary, oceanic origins and our impact on marine ecosystems. Her work draws on her background as a rock climber and free-diver, and her particular interests in female physicality and athleticism. Coates’ works are shown in both galleries and film festivals. Coates has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (1st class) from Curtin University, Perth and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. www.erincoates.net

Alluvial Gold 2
Photo credit: Edify Media

Alluvial Gold 3
Photo credit: Edify Media

Alluvial Gold 4
Photo credit: Edify Media

Development status: In repertoire

Alluvial Gold received a soft premiere at Perth Festival in 2021, with a season of 4 sold-out performances.

The full premiere season at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (July 20-22) was also completely sold out.

A subsequent performance season is scheduled in Sydney as part of Percussion Australia’s 2023 season.

There is a companion work: a short film titled The Alluvium (10 mins). This short film by Erin Coates with Louise Devenish and Stuart James is an option for a stand-alone film installation to be installed in additional venue spaces during the season. The Alluvium won the 2022 WA Screen Culture Award for Innovation in Moving Image and Installation Art category, and is was exhibited at the 2022 Sydney Biennale along with the dolphin bones sculpture and other works by Coates.

Other logistical info

  • Alluvial Gold is best suited to a black box space.
  • It is accessible by people of all ages and abilities.
  • A full tech spec can be provided on request.

Acknowledgements

Funded by the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries, Australian Research Council, Monash University.  Dr Louise Devenish is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE200100555) funded by the Australian Government.

Press quotes

‘Beautifully integrated artistry from three thoughtful and immensely skilled creators.’
- Rosalind Appleby, Seesaw

‘a fine example of Australian eco-artistry’
- Kate Milligan, Resonate

'Alluvial Gold is a gobsmacking display of talent from all the creatives involved, and a reminder to pause and consider the river that we live and work around a little more deeply'
- Emily Smith, Magazine 6000

'Alluvial Gold is a challenging and sonically complex exploration into an alternate underwater existence. It prompts us to step back and consider how our own reality and actions frequently intersect and affect countless other worlds in the process’.
- Stephanie Reitsch, ArtsHub

‘a triumph, conjuring both wonder and awe, mystery and dread’
- Belinda Hermawan, Seesaw

Alluvial Gold 5
Photo credit: Edify Media