DATES
Sat 17 May 3 – 4pm
Audio Art Australia (AAA) is a new record label focused on highlighting sound work by contemporary artists better known for their visual practices. AAA launches at MABF with the limited-edition LP ‘Robert Rooney: Graphic Scores’, bringing together all extant recordings of Rooney’s avant-garde scores from the 1960s with new writing about his little-known sound practice. These performances, featuring Rooney (piano), Barry McKimm (trumpet) and Syd Clayton (double bass), document one of the earliest occasions in Australian history when experimentation in visual art and music was combined.
Join AAA for a conversation about Rooney’s visually orientated approach to music, followed by a live performance of his Second landscape for instruments (Slippery seal) 1968 in the NGV Collection by three contemporary artist-musicians.
Participants
Barry McKimm
Barry McKimm is a revered Australian composer whose career started in 1958 as a trumpet player working in theatre and jazz. In 1963 he helped established Melbourne’s first free-jazz club, The Fat Black Pussy Cat, and throughout that decade gained recognition for his avant-garde jazz and non-jazz compositions. His trio with Robert Rooney and Syd Clayton was integral to the development of experimental music in Australia and the first group here to combine jazz and contemporary art music forms. Since 1970 he has composed award-winning orchestral and chamber music.
Daniel Jenatsch
Daniel Jenatsch is an artist and musician based in Naarm/Melbourne, working across sound design, music, video and installation. His work combines hyper-detailed soundscapes, music, text and video to create multimedia documentaries, installations, radio pieces and live performances. His work has been presented at ACCA, ACMI, Arts House, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, the Athens Biennale, Liquid Architecture, the MCA, and Mousonturm in Frankfurt. He was awarded the 2021 John Fries Award for The Close World. As a composer and collaborator, Daniel has worked with artists including Matthew Barney, Jonathan Bepler, Arto Lindsay, KimSooja, Lucy Guerin, Claire Lambe, Atlanta Eke, and Amrita Hepi, contributing to films, performances, exhibitions and games.
Meri Leeworthy
Meri Leeworthy is an artist, musician, writer and technologist living in Naarm/Melbourne. Her electronic music draws on minimalist and spiritual music traditions in traversing deep synthetic sound worlds and has been presented as multichannel spatial music, composing and sound design for theatre, film, installation and live performance. Her work has been presented in programs by Melbourne Recital Centre, The Substation, Next Wave Festival, RMIT, Liquid Architecture, La Mama and George Patton Gallery. She was awarded a Green Room Award for Composition and Sound Design for the theatre production Moral Panic in 2018.
Ali McCann
Ali McCann is an artist, musician and teacher based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her studio-based practice explores the illusionary and nostalgic tendencies of the photographic image, and the extended life of objects – pedagogical, decorative and sentimental – when displaced in alternate temporal, spatial and psychological realms. Her work has been presented at the National Gallery of Victoria, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Gertrude Contemporary, Neon Parc, Sarah Scout Presents, Kings Artist-Run, Bus Projects, Caves, TCB Art Inc and correspondences. Between 2007 and 2018 she wrote and performed with Naarm/Melbourne-based five piece, Beaches.