A NETS Victoria and Monash University Museum of Art touring exhibition
Seeing Voices uses Monash University Museum of Art’s collection as a springboard for thinking through the voice and how it is visualised, employed and reimagined in works of contemporary art. In the exhibition, the voice opens onto a multiplicity of concepts. It acts as a metaphor for collective action; for speaking out against injustice and coming together in gestures of solidarity. It is a marker of cultural and geographic specificity; a medium for conditioned colloquialisms and the trace of disappearing language or dialect.
In this way, the voice can also function like a spiritual medium; through its recording and archiving it can time-travel, haunting the present as if a ghost from the past. The voice is also an index; a measure of positon, perspective, distance and emotion. In private, in public, in conversation, on record – the voice connects our experiences with those of others.
The exhibition is comprised of works selected from the Monash University Collection along with several loans from Australian and international artists. They cover drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, and print, creating a textured and layered environment of sound, scale, moving imagery and shape.
Seeing Voices will tour to six regional galleries throughout 2017-19. In addition to the exhibition, each venue will host the presentation of a live work, either existing or newly conceived, by an artist from Australia or abroad. These artists have been selected based on their interest in the voice and the desire to bring the immediacy of the live voice into the exhibition space.
Exhibiting artists: Damiano Bertoli, Erik Bünger, Catherine or Kate, Michael Cook, Léuli Eshraghi, Alicia Frankovich, Susan Hiller, Nina Katchadourian, Alex Martinis Roe, Angelica Mesiti, Clinton Nain, Rose Nolan
Performance artists: Erik Bünger, Sean Dockray, Hannah Donnelly, Rosie Isaacs, Wrong Solo
Curatorium: Hannah Mathews, Helen Hughes and Frances E Parker
Touring schedule:
14 October – 10 December 2017
Horsham Regional Art Gallery
Live performance artist: Wrong Solo (early December)
1 February – 25 March 2018
Mildura Arts Centre
Live performance artist: Rosie Isaacs
20 April – 17 June 2018
Cairns Regional Art Gallery
Live performance artist: Erik Bunger
13 July – 16 September 2018
Riddoch Art Gallery, Mt Gambier
Live performance artist: Sean Dockray
15 February – 7 April 2019
Bathurst Regional Gallery
Live performance artist: Hannah Donnelly
1 May – 30 June 2019
Devonport Regional Gallery
Live performance artist: Hannah Donnelly
National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) Victoria is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. NETS Victoria also receives significant in-kind support from the National Gallery of Victoria.
