Impressions of our Arteries
Group Exhibition/ Dates: 10 March - 01 April, 2017/ Venue: Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Brisbane.
Exhibition Description
The Impression of Our Arteries is an exhibition curated by Professor Debra Porch, that questions how the heart and mind convey significant and revealing impressions and intentions through objects, images, and the senses. It reflects the circulatory patterns between those I love, and the feelings, senses, intuition, perception, influence, and impressions that are formed from these bonds.
This page focuses on my artworks featured in this group exhibition, exploring the theme of arteries and impressions of the heart. My response to this theme centers on recorded music as a means of expressing and generating human emotion. Some of my artworks evoke tenderness, drawing inspiration from love songs, while others materialize feelings of anxiety, anger, isolation, and loss. The sculptures presented were created from rejected and damaged sound recording materials, serving as metaphors for separation, break-ups, familiarity, the past, and the process of moving on from such heartfelt situations.
"Creature of Sound" 2017 (side-view detail). Music stand, melted and reshaped vinyl record, cassette tape.
"Creature of Sound: schizophonic type" 2017. Music stand, melted and reshaped vinyl record, cassette tape.
"Creature of Sound: schizophonic type 2" 2017. Music stand, melted and reshaped vinyl record, cassette tape.
"Creature of Sound: schizophonic type 3" 2017. Music stand, melted and reshaped vinyl record, cassette tape.
"Heartbeats" 2017. Pink music stand, melted vinyl record of an old love song coated in videotape shard from the romance genre.
"Creature of Sound: schizophonic type 4" 2017. Music stand, melted and reshaped vinyl record, cassette tape.
Artwork Statement:
The Creatures of Sound sculptures (2017) were created entirely from discarded sound recording materials. I collected these items from op-shops, where records, tapes, and music stands often lay damaged and forgotten. By transforming these relics, I gave them a new life, allowing them to impact the senses in a different way.
Recorded songs can be significant at the beginning or end of a relationship, yet their relevance fades over time. Sound recordings can soothe or exacerbate emotions, even possessing some people. The Creatures of Sound symbolize how sound can become an entity or organic emotion within someone.
Creating these sculptures involved acts of destruction to transform sound recording materials into something new. Although these materials no longer produce audio sounds, traces of their sonic identity remain. I liken this to the body, where we cannot see our arteries and nerves that circulate life and energy. The cassette and videotape used in these sculptures metaphorically represent arteries and nerves that help one experience feelings and sensations.
Records were heated in boiling water and reshaped into organ-like forms, becoming the hearts and heads of the creatures. Music stands served as structural supports, bent to create various postures and limbs. Some creatures resemble animals, others have a stance like children or adults. Together, they interact like a community, each with its character but unified by their sonic past.
The tape was stretched into thin wire to connect the music stands to the melted records, forming networks and body-like structures. The clustered tape suggests an entanglement of histories and sensations, giving these Creatures a wild and unkempt appearance.
Ali Bezer, 2017