The Gordon Assumption | Sonia Leber and David Chesworth


		more images...
	Sonia Leber and David Chesworth The Gordon Assumption, 2004 Installation in Subterranean Toilets, Gordon Reserve Melbourne International Arts Festival - Visual Arts Program Randomised sound files, scanning light, steel doors





	listen to excerpt (6') An incessant outpouring of female voices lures passersby down the stairwell to the cave-like subterranean toilets. At the lower gates, they are confronted with an asynchronous chorus of female voices in infinitely rising pitch. The voices gather and thicken without respite, in upwards glissandi, constantly trailing upwards. Behind the locked gates, the luminous green chamber beckons as a single vertical slit of brilliant white light slowly scans the surfaces. The subterranean setting reveals itself as a point of rupture in Melbourne's everyday cityscape of workers, commuters and public transport. The voices recall the mythologies and mysteries of voices heard in caves, where the voices of spirits, sibyls and oracles are believed to announce predictions and warnings from the mouth of a cave. Above ground in Gordon Reserve, new arrivals gather in apprehensive huddles, prior to making their cautious descent into the upward trails of female voices. ‘Altogether striking and astounding...anything but quiet and understated... Deftly woven into the fabric of everyday Melbourne, disrupting the easy flow of city routine...startling and fascinating commuters and passersby...’ Jeff Kahn, RealTime No.64, Sydney, December 2004 ‘Across town, far from any gallery environment, a chorus of a thousand wordless angels... streams up out of the ground like a legion of mad souls fleeing their opened graves. David Chesworth and Sonia Leber's Gordon Assumption is the soundscape for a ferocious resurrection... Is the city disgorging its dead from the sewers?...Chesworth and Leber, like necromancers, wind up supernatural effects from the mundane fabric of the city... ‘ Edward Colless, 'Lucid Screams to Stir the Nation's Soul', The Australian, 25 October 2004
Almost Always Everywhere Apparent Oceanic Endless Reiterations (Elizabeth Street) Proximities David Chesworth Music Gordon Assumption The Master's Voice 5000 Calls The Persuaders Polymerous Environment Videowall