[PRESS PLAY]

This Is Not A Love Song [Sound Archive] is an ongoing project to create a field recording sound archive of major art museums around the world. These are ambient sounds of exhibition spaces.

The sound archive will feature a recording of a Museum from every possible Nation, building toward 200 museum recordings from 200 nations.

[THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG]

[Concept]

This Is Not A Love Song invites participants to explore the relationship between individuals and institutions through sound. It creates a space for critical reflection on field recordings and museums by immersing listeners in a unique soundscape experience. The project fosters collaboration through email and phone communication, generating an ongoing dialogue between artists, audiences, arts workers, and institutions. This focus on deep listening and quiet actions fosters a critical discourse centered around care.

[Quality and relevance of professional practice]

With over 10 years of experience in exhibitions, residencies, and outsider practices, I hold a Fine Arts degree (1st Class Honours, 2014), MFA by Research (2016), and am currently applying as a Doctoral Candidate at UNSW under Caleb Kelly (2025).

The proposed project aligns perfectly with the Powerhouse Museum’s mission to foreground intersections of art and technology; to engage with contemporary ideas by engaging community. This project’s successful inclusion in prestigious programs (Cité Internationale des Arts, Resonance Extra) and its appeal to diverse audiences (galleries, universities, radio) demonstrates its potential to resonate with the Powerhouse Museum’s vision to re-examine museums’ roles and explore the power of storytelling. Furthermore, by focusing on sound, an underrepresented field, the project can contribute to a more immersive and dynamic museum experience, aligning with the Powerhouse Museum’s commitment to innovation.

[Working with cultural institutions]

This Is Not a Love Song has fostered collaborations with prestigious institutions like the Guggenheim Bilbao and MCA Sydney, enriching the archive with unique soundscapes. Its international reach extends beyond exhibitions. A six-episode series on Resonance Extra, a renowned London radio program, broadcasted the archive’s soundscapes, with plans for future collaborations. Additionally, the project’s artistic potential was explored through various artworks and international publications including the Artspace Fellowship curated by Alexi Glass-Kantor at the National Art School supported by CreateNSW funding, 2022 here in Australia and the book by Centre Pompidou Curator Ilaria Conti et al, Around Labour, Art and the Auratic Condition (This IS Not A Love Song), published by Printed Matter, 2020.

[background]

Officially launched as a solo exhibition in at COMA, Sydney, Australia, August 2019. The exhibition commenced in concert a residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, August to October 2019.

The Cité des Arts, has 300 studios and more than 50 partnering countries supporting music, theatre, art, literature, architecture and design. The residency was an ideal platform to meet artists of diverse nationalities to facilitate the larger ambition of recording all around the world. During the residency, recordings were made in European institutions; in addition to developing the network of artists, writers and curators who have committed to contribute to the project remotely. Contributors are given a written instruction. The project continued in 2022 with a focus on the US and Canada under the Vermont Studio Centre Fellowship program.

A key inspiration to the project came from visiting the MMK Frankfurt, in 2018, featuring a Cady Noland solo exhibition. In each of the rooms of this prestigious space, minimal small and large-scale artworks were displayed, and every room was guarded by a gallery attendant. Because the gallery was vast and almost empty, the resulting effect presented a single installation object/s coupled with a person (the attendant) and their chair. Object and invigilator made up the visual field together. This highlighted the presence of the viewing body, and the relationship between a human scaled body and the architecture of the institutional body that framed the works of art.