ACCA ON TOUR
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Sonia Leber and David Chesworth’s Almost Always Everywhere Apparent to be launched at the Mildura Arts Centre.
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A major artwork by leading sound, video and installation artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth - the 2007 Helen Macpherson Smith Commission at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art - will go on display at the Mildura Arts Centre from November.
Almost Always Everywhere Apparent is a massive sound and sculpture piece where human voices resonate through a series of corridors, all leading into a cathedral-like space which is part heaven and part ‘polyphonic phantasmagoria’.
The work was exhibited to great acclaim at ACCA last year, and a component will be gifted permanently to the Mildura Arts Centre as part of the Helen Macpherson Smith Commission. The commission, an annual event at ACCA, offers one Victorian artist each year the opportunity to create an ambitious new work of art accompanied by an exhibition. A portion of the work is then gifted to a regional Victorian gallery.
Almost Always Everywhere Apparent’s showing in Mildura has been enhanced with funds from Arts Victoria’s Major Touring Initiative, and is part of a new touring program that will see works from ACCA’s NEW and Helen Macpherson Smith Commission exhibitions shown at regional galleries around Victoria.
“We’re thrilled to be able to bring this monumental work to Mildura,” says ACCA’s Executive Director Kay Campbell. “It’s a colossal project - both physically and in terms of what the artists have achieved - and it is a real pleasure for us to show it outside of Melbourne.”
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Sonia Leber and David Chesworth
Almost Always Everywhere Apparent
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Using the human voice as its principal medium, Leber and Chesworth have created a fascinating body of work since first collaborating in 1996. A chorus of female voices called for attention from the pit of a subterranean toilet block in The Gordon Assumption (2004, as part of the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts), passers-by were beckoned, controlled and cajoled like a much-loved family pet from a wall in Canberra's City Walk (The Masters Voice, 2001), and a sonic corridor of human voices from 53 Commonwealth nations proclaimed culturally significant songs on Melbourne's William Barak Bridge (Proximities, 2006, in collaboration with Simeon Nelson).
Both artists have been focused on sound for many years. Chesworth began creating soundworks in 1978 with the experimental music outfit Essendon Airport at the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre. He is today a sought-after composer whose works and sound installations have been performed and exhibited extensively in Australia and overseas. Sonia Leber began using sound in her film and video works, and in 1994 curated the major sound art event Earwitness: Excursions in Sound for Melbourne's Contemporary Music Events.
Of Almost Always Everywhere Apparent, ACCA’s Artistic Director Juliana Engberg says: “Leber and Chesworth combine the ecclesiastical and the secular in this massive sound and structure project. Almost Always Everywhere Apparent collides the concepts of the ‘all seeing’ enlightenment with the prescient and primordial unseen. The audience will enter a heavenly chamber, or an earthly confinement, depending upon their own reactions to the space. Leber and Chesworth have been devoted to exploring the voice as an object in itself, broken free from its connection to the body and language”.
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The Helen Macpherson Smith Commission
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One of the most significant and generous commissions in Australia, the Helen Macpherson Smith Commission is a partnership between ACCA and the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and offers Victorian artists the opportunity to create an ambitious new work of art, accompanied by an exhibition in ACCA’s exhibition hall. The work is then gifted to a regional Victorian gallery. The Commission is now in its fourth year, and previous recipients include Callum Morton and Daniel von Sturmer. The 2008 recipient was Rosslynd Piggott.
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The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)
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The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art is Melbourne’s premier contemporary art space presenting challenging, innovative visual art from Australia and overseas. ACCA offers a changing program of exhibitions, events and education programs aimed at expanding public understanding, awareness and enjoyment of contemporary visual culture. It also has a strong emphasis on commissioning new works by Australian artists, and in the past six years has commissioned over 150 new works for ACCA exhibitions.
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Sonia Leber and David Chesworth
Almost Always Everywhere Apparent
28 November 2008 - 11 March 2009
Mildura Arts Centre
ACCA Media Contact:
Katrina Hall - 0421 153 046 or kathall@ozemail.com.au
MAC Media Contact:
Antonette Zema 03 5018 8331/0448 011226 or antonette.zema@mildura.vic.gov.au
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