By now you will know that my day trip mantra is ‘read brass plaques on rocks and buildings when you see them’ and ‘read descriptions and notices beside sculptures and artworks’. You will learn many things.
I also say ‘it pays to talk’ no matter whether to strangers or friends.
Both came true on Saturday while visiting the Benalla Art Gallery and led to a wonderful afternoon of art exploration.
After enjoying coffee on the deck and a long talk with a friend, we went inside to the Simpson Gallery.
To our surprise we did not see painted works on the walls, but instead in the darkened room, an array of different sized, black-faced brass drums.
We did not realise what they were until we spoke to a man who revealed that he was the artist Daniel O’Toole and his exhibition ‘Voices from the Void’ (until April 9) had opened the previous night.
He explained that he was an audio technician and that these pieces sing when interacted with. As you pass them you hear that each is tuned to a chord and has a background bird song.
The faster, slower, closer you move, so the sound is revealed. Each person’s ear will hear it differently.
His complex work combines technology, industrial fabrication processes, the natural world and humans.
Daniel is also a street or graffiti artist and his works were among the first Wall to Wall Festival paintings done in Benalla in 2015.
He has two large paintings attributed to ears, one near Hyde’s Bakery and the other in a Bridge Street Arcade. We went to see them after we left the gallery.
Before we left, we explored the exhibition ‘Between [the] Details: Video ART from the ACMI Collection’ (now closed) in the Bennett Gallery next door.
This showcased six moving image artworks by Australian artists.
ACMI is the national museum of screen culture located at Federation Square in Melbourne. First called the State Film Centre, it now collects and commissions artworks and experimental film that includes digitised content and born-digital material.
It became evident that this is not a quick walk around the exhibition, time was required to read the accompanying text and watch each film of varying length. There is comfortable seating available.
Fortunately, one of us had a smart phone to access additional information accompanying each work via a QR code.
The longest film Analects of Kung Phu: Book 1, the 69 Dialogues between the Lamp and the Shadow is 85 minutes.
It is a curious combination of so-called wise sayings cut from 69 martial arts movies produced since 1978. Its accompanying dialogue can be heard on headsets.
The artist wanted to explore ‘representational fallacies and historical inaccuracies’ to help us find our own guiding sayings.
Originally a Sydney girl, I was intrigued by the documentary film Beehive by Zanny Begg that explores the unresolved death, or murder, of Juanita Neilsen in 1975. Fact, fiction, social context and other creative tools hint at but not resolve history.
We were captivated by all these creative works, especially the sometimes comic, animated collages that became ‘Gods of Tiny Things’. Its message was too subtle for us and we relied on the accompanying printed word, but did not inhibit the children seen dancing in front of it.
Most humorous and colourful is the eight-minute video Ngura Pukulpa - Happy Place by Kaylene Whiskey showing where she lives, listens to music and dances with her friends and family.
If it were not for Saturday’s gallery member volunteers, we might have missed going into the black cube and putting on the headset and earphones to experience the 360-video called Bayi Gardiya (Singing Desert) by Dr Christian Thompson AO.
He is a Bidjara Chinese Australian who has attended Oxford University. His work explores his mixed identity, culture and country.
This exhibition, now closed, will be replaced by Tony Lloyd’s High Plains Drift, an exhibition of immaculately detailed alpine landscape paintings, created from both photographs and memory.
It is always exciting seeing and experiencing art in its many forms at the Benalla Art Gallery.
We were so pleased that we were in the gallery last Saturday because we had a wonderful day trip experience.
– Suzie Pearce