Jacqui O’Reilly’s sound-based performance, Time as a Sonic Gesture, explores persistence of vision as multi-sensory perception. Using body, memory and motion as the resonant site, O’Reilly’s long form performance will be shared with viewers as an evolving live soundscape via the listening intimacy of wireless headphones. This internalised deep listening will invite spatial presence and meditative states to mark time within an immersive sensory environment.
The concept for Time as a Sonic Gesture, emerged in response to Katelyn Geard’s work, I Have Something to Say, (exhibited in GRAPHITE, at DRAW Space, April 2024). This work was described as a drawing ‘soft as a whisper’ in its reach beyond two dimensions. Time as a Sonic Gesture plays with this notion of persistence of vision, to instantiate time as a trans-disciplinary gesture of collective presence in the making and sharing of art. Throughout the evening local guests artists Laura Altman and Alexandra Spence will improvise with O’Reilly and play solo, to unfold an experimental and immersive soundscape performance.
TIME AS A SONIC GESTURE is curated by Belinda Yee as part of an ongoing series of performances looking at the relationship of drawing to sound.
BIOGRAPHIES
Jacqui O’Reilly is an autistic artist and musician from Aotearoa New Zealand, now based on Gadigal Land. Her experimental practice investigates identity, place and sensory perception with a focus on sound as material, to explore social and environmental relations. O’Reilly’s work is embedded in her lifelong experience of creative adaptation, to voice sensory interconnection in deeply nuanced ways. Intimate communication with her materials and hypnotic, repetitive methods of making, shape the composition of mesmerising music, video work and live performances.
Over the past five years O’Reilly’s work has been presented at Pyramid Club, Aotearoa NZ; Church St Studios, Camperdown NSW; PACT, Sydney NSW; Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, NSW; Frontyard Projects, Marrickville NSW; and UNSW Galleries, Paddington NSW. O’Reilly has a BA Media Arts (Honours) from UNSW Art, Design & Architecture and she was recently awarded an Inner West Council Arts Professional Development Grant. Her studio practice is currently based at Church Street Studios, Camperdown NSW. In May 2024, she released the single Quiet Constellation, available on Bandcamp and filmed at the Golden Age Cinema in Sydney, NSW.
https://www.jacquioreilly.com/
Alexandra Spence is a sound-artist/musician living on unceded Wangal Land in Sydney. Her aesthetic favours field recordings, analogue technologies and object interventions, reimagining the intricate relationships between the listener, the object, and the surrounding environment as a kind of communion or conversation. Alex has presented her art and music in Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America including AB Salon, Brussels; Ausland, Berlin; BBC Radio; Café Oto, London; Cave12, Geneva; EMS, Stockholm; The Lab, San Francisco; Liveworks Festival, with Liquid Architecture, Carriageworks, Sydney; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; MONO at the IMA, Brisbane; Punkt Festival, Kristiansand; Radiophrenia Festival at the CCA Glasgow; Soft Centre, Sydney; Sound Forms Festival, Hong Kong; Standards Studio, Milan; The Substation, Melbourne; & Volume Festival, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. She regularly collaborates with MP Hopkins as Banana, they also co-run the Sydney sound series Humming Grotto. She has released her music with Room40, Longform Editions, Mappa, Canti Magnetici (solo), More Mars & Infant Tree (as Banana) (She holds the belief that electricity might actually be magic).
https://alexandraspence.net
Laura Altman is based in Sydney on Gadigal-Wangal Country, where she has woven her way through the improvised, exploratory and folk music scenes with her intuitive clarinet playing, free improvising and compositions. She is a long-standing member of many varied ensembles, including improvising collective Splinter Orchestra, and internationally acclaimed trio Great Waitress alongside Monica Brooks and Magda Mayas. In more recent years Laura has ventured into a solo improvisation practice that involves her unique approach to the clarinet underpinned by a curiosity with resonance and feedback. She has also been writing songs with voice and guitar that are beginning to find their way into the world. Laura co-hosts Listening Space on Eastside Radio 89.7FM, and helps run the online exploratory music directory and newsletter emus.space.
https://www.lauraaltman.net
This project is supported by an Inner West Council Arts Grant and assisted by PACT.
