Description
In 2020, the National Museum of Australia commissioned musician and composer Genevieve Lacey to create new ways for audiences to engage with its iconic Garden of Australian Dreams (GoAD).
The result is Breathing Space – a rewilding in sound. This permanent sound installation is a groundbreaking way to make the GoAD more welcoming to visitors, enabling them to create their own real and imagined connections to place. Breathing Space animates the site with sound, making it enticing and alive; a place to explore, discover, play, rest and reflect.
As they move within the GoAD, visitors will hear familiar and unfamiliar sounds: choruses of frogs and cicadas, the flutter of strings, percussive creaks and rattles, subterranean rumbles from the deep oceans, human voices whispering, speaking, and singing, and beautiful instrumental phrases, layered and abstracted into patterns.
Genevieve worked with over 60 people to bring her vision to life. Musical collaborators include Lou Bennett (Yorta Yorta Dja Dja Wurrung; voice), Consort of Melbourne (dir. Steve Hodgson, choir), Vahideh Eisaei (qanun), Simon Martyn-Ellis (theorbo, baroque guitar), Linda Kent (pipe organ), Sunny Kim (voice), Marshall McGuire (harp), Phil Slater (trumpet), Speak Percussion (dir. Eugene Ughetti), Amadou Suso (kora), Erkki Veltheim (violin and viola), Mindy Meng Wang (guzheng).
Breathing Space in the Garden of Australian Dreams, National Museum of Australia, Canberra / Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri Country – opens to the public on 31 March 2023. The album is landing next week.
