responses - bibliography

Press Responses


Almost Always Everywhere Apparent
As the recipients of the third annual Helen Macpherson Smith Commission, Leber and Chesworth created a large scale sound and structure project for the cavernous main exhibition space at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

'[A] substantial and ambitious architectural solo installation...presented with challenging theoretical material...'
Robert Nelson, 'The Year in Review: Visual Art', The Age, Melbourne, 26 December 2007

'A surprisingly taut density...Leber and Chesworth seem to replicate the dynamics of Jeremy Bentham's panoptic prison architectural system, where a central concealed overseer observes a perimeter structure of permanently silhouetted figures. Accentuated by the splintered choral singing, the installation equally hints at ecclesiastic architecture, of cloisters and interior domes. By combining panoptic and cathedral inspired space, the installation highlights their shared architectonic logic of an omnipresent overseer.'
Amy Marjoram, Real Time, October 2007

'It doesn't take long inside the installation to realise that you have been coerced into becoming part of the work itself. Unavoidably, irresistibly, the watcher becomes the watched... You cannot simply remain a voyeur, but are forced to become a participant ...you imagine your own behaviour being observed, silhouetted in the confines of the corridor.'
Martin Ball, The Age, 18 August 2007

'What is most pertinent for this installation...is the belief that architectural forms and, in particular, the introduction of a new visual and spatial apparatus can change the nature of inhabitants... There is now the dread that everyone...may be transformed into their worst enemy.'
Nikos Papastergiadis, Almost Always Everywhere Apparent, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art 2007

'This "Gesamtkunstwerk"- where the arts meet and fuse - is restaged with an uncanny resemblance to the panopticon... You peer through each terminal eye and witness bizarre spectacles - a person levitating on the ceiling, a view of a choir from the dome, a group of people gathered on a ceiling, like sticky seaweed splattered into the corner of a room.'
Robert Nelson, The Age, 22 August 2007


Reiterations (Elizabeth Street)
An imagined sound-space of Elizabeth Street in the city of Melbourne. We encounter each individual in turn, inhabiting their listening perspectives as they sing and move about the city.

'Into this hub of urban noise Leber and Chesworth have sent their individual travellers to walk and sing their way through the city. Songs that once described the pulverising of corn, or the happy return of mothers from the field...enter into the urban village of Melbourne... These African voices seem authentic and exuberant...percussive and urgent. This sense of urgency perhaps represents the larger struggle that accompanies the condition of those caught up in the diaspora, and the reserve of strength it takes to enter a new place and space while keeping a cultural memory and life intact. '
Juliana Engberg, +Plus Factors exhibition catalogue, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2006


The Gordon Assumption
A loud outpouring of female song lures passersby into hidden underground spaces. Originally commissioned for the 2004 Melbourne International Arts Festival for a non-functioning subterranean toilet block beside a major public transport node.

'Something 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 passers-by.'
Jeff Khan, RealTime No. 64, Australia, December 2004

'Streams up out of the ground like a legion of mad souls fleeing their opened graves…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, October 25 2004

'Although the work's major trope is the bodily Assumption of Mary (her physical ascent into Heaven), the 'assuming' is ongoing and provisional: a thickening exhumation of protocols of imaginably primal music and sound: upward glissandi, Shepard's Tones...No madrigals for Mary.'
Peter King, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Visual Arts Program catalogue, 2004


5000 Calls
A multi-channel soundscape artwork built up around 5000 different voice fragments uncovered from everyday life. The 'sense' of speech has been removed to reveal a changing chorus of human effort.

NAWIC 2000 Award for Achievement in Design
National Association for Women in Construction, Australia

"Remarkable"
Philippe Régnier, The Art Newspaper No. 105, London, July-August 2000

"5000 Calls lives as an enormous space-and-time machine. The work soaks the precinct with a continuous buzz of anticipation..."
Ross Gibson, Pol Oxygen No. 5, Sydney, October 2003

"Extraordinarily successful…the effect is arresting, literally stopping passers-by in their tracks."
Bleddyn Butcher, The Wire, London, July 2003

"I was suddenly struck by the intimacy - and by the archetypal quality - of the cries. By restricting themselves to preverbal utterances, the artists have, in effect, created a universal language. People can recognise and respond to these wordless exhalations. People also recognise the freshness of the piece's conceit."
Bleddyn Butcher, The Wire, London, July 2003

"Public art too often devolves into compromised cliché as vested interests 'negotiate' the outcome. 5000 Calls survives this process and demonstrates a role for new media arts in this area."
Paul Brown, RealTime No. 36, Sydney, May 2000

"5000 Calls ... comes as a complete surprise both in its functioning and in what it says about the inclusive possibilities for the creation of public art in highly visible venues ... It utterly transgresses presumptions of the monumental generally associated with privileged outdoor sites ...5000 Calls literally haunts the site, blurring the delineation of public and private, presence and absence, celebration and distress."
Alex Gawronski, Real Time No.40, Sydney, Jan 2001

"5000 Calls is at once the most evocative and evasive of all the works here."
Felicity Fenner, Art in America, May 2001


The Master's Voice
Passersby trigger real-world sounds of people calling to animals. With the sounds of the animals edited out, the voices seem to be calling out directly to the passersby: beckoning, controlling, and coaxing.

NAWIC 2002 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Design
National Association for Women in Construction, Australia

"Using the doggerel and playful name-calling of people talking to their pets...The Master's Voice appears to follow listeners as they walk along a wall in Canberra: the setting in the national capital perhaps inviting questions about who is the master and who is on the leash.
Matthew Westwood, The Australian, August 4, 2005.

"The work ... trips up passers-by, induces double-takes, private puzzled glances ... It addresses us directly... these calls are full of questions, invitations to conversation, spaces for exchange; there's this urge for an interchange...
Mitchell Whitelaw, RealTime No. 46, Sydney, December 2001

"The 'sensible' inflections of speech get stretched into wild glisses and warbling melisma; syllables shorten into abstract sonic punctuation ... these candid, charged interspecies moments emerge from inconspicuous slots in a mallscape; their sonic shapes stand out against the 'public' murmur of social verbosity."
Mitchell Whitelaw, RealTime No. 46, Sydney, December 2001


The Persuaders
A seven channel DVD installation built up around human voice crowd patterns.

"The Persuaders is a new kind of symphony, a sonic pattern of truly felt, deeply embodied sounds uttered by impassioned devotees … it dramatises the surges of energy that go into and come out of people operating at the edge of sociability and at the end of their tethers."
Ross Gibson, POL Oxygen No. 5, Sydney, October 2003

A fascinating theatre of dissociated yet associative, mediated voices...
Through the deft manipulation of sonic and performative minutiae...the piece possesses all the fragile beauty of an Eric Satie study.
Jonathan Marshall, RealTime No. 57, Sydney, October 2003

"It is soon apparent that each watches their own game - a different game, at a different time… Time is fragmented, cut up, represented by the artists as an accidental composition of conjunctions - and disjunctions - of sound and gesture. While one watcher regards us with sullen silence, another erupts in a fury that passes just as quickly as it arises. Emotions flicker across faces, and move through the body in twitches tics and grand gestures… Seven individuals alone in their rooms urging on different teams, in different places, at different times, all at once."
Tony MacGregor, catalogue essay, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, April 2003

responses - top

Selected Bibliography

2008
- Nikos Papastergiadis, 'Confined Abyss: Art in the Dusk of Reason', Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2008, forthcoming
- Jonathan Marshall, 'Flatness, Ornamentality and the Sonic Image: Puncturing flânerie at Proximities', in Sound Scripts 2, Perth, 2008, forthcoming
- Jennifer Brown, 'Blitz: Discursive bombardments in "the war on terror"', PhD dissertation, Southern Cross University, NSW, 2008

2007
- Robert Nelson, 'The Year in Review: Visual Art', The Age, Melbourne, 26 December 2007
- Amy Marjoram, 'Between Heaven and Hell', RealTime Magazine No. 81, October 2007
- Robert Nelson, 'In claustrophobia and freeze-frame movement meaning lies between the gaps', The Age, Melbourne, 22 August 2007
- Martin Ball, 'Now see, hear', The Age, Melbourne, 18 August 2007
- Fiona Scott-Norman, 'Giving Voice to Their Art', The Age, Melbourne, 10 August 2007

2006
- Jon Dale, 'Once Upon a Time in Melbourne' in The Wire no 272, London, October 2006
- Juliana Engberg, 'My Chicken is Missing' in +Plus Factors exhibition catalogue, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2006

2005
- Darren Tofts, Interzone: Media Arts in Australia, Craftsman House, 2005
- Matthew Westwood, 'Super Sonic Trespasser' in The Australian, August 4 2005
- Sunanda Creagh, 'Reviving the Crackle...', in The Sydney Morning Herald, July 27
2005

2004
- Edward Colless, 'Lucid Screams to Stir the Nation's Soul' in The Australian, October 25 2004
- Peter King, '"I'll Drown My Book": the Caves of The Gordon Assumption', Melbourne International Arts Festival, Visual Arts Program catalogue, Melbourne 2004
- A Ivanova, A Cavallaro, 'Unnatural Selection', Ars Electronica exhibition catalogue, Novamedia, Melbourne, 2004
- Jonathan Marshall, 'The voice in and beyond history' in Real Time, No 64, Sydney, December 2004
- Ross Gibson, 'Sounds Like Art' in lab.3000 Digital Design Biennale catalogue, Melbourne 2004
- Jo Roberts, 'For your convenience…' in The Age, Melbourne, October 5 2004
- Jeff Kahn, 'Under the cover of night' in Real Time No. 64, Sydney, December 2004
- Daniel Palmer, 'Seeing voices' in Real Time No. 64, Sydney, December 2004
- 'Best of the Fest' in The Age, October 3 2004
- Simon Plant, 'Opera Out of This World' in The Herald Sun, Melbourne, October 22 2004
- Jo Roberts, 'No Longer Stranded in Space' in The Age, Melbourne, 0ctober 21 2004
- John Slavin, 'Emotions Soar to the Stars' in The Age, Melbourne, 0ctober 23 2004

2003
- Ross Gibson, 'Sounds Like Art' in POL Oxygen, No. 5, 2003
- Bleddyn Butcher, 'Cross Platform: Sound in Other Media' The Wire, No. 233, London, July 2003
- Tony MacGregor, The Persuaders exhibition catalogue essay, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, April 2003

2002
- '5000 Calls' in Chapter Arts Centre magazine, Cardiff, October 2002
- 'Chorus of Approval' in 24 Hours, Sydney, March 2002

2001
- Mitchell Whitelaw, 'Sit, Ubu, Sit. Good dog' in Real Time, No. 46, Sydney, December 2001
- Bruce James, 'The Master's Voice' interview on Arts Today, ABC Radio National, November 1 2001
- Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, '5000 Calls' in Earshot soundscape journal, UK, December 2001
- Felicity Fenner, 'Ground Work' in Art in America, May 2001

2000
- Philipe Regnier, 'Art and the Olympics' in The Art Newspaper, No. 105, London, July 2000
- Alex Gawronski, 'Game Over? The Olympics Arts Commissions' in Real Time No. 40, Sydney, December 2000
- '5000 Calls' in Sydney Olympic Park, Public Arts Program catalogue, Sydney, June 2000
- Paul Brown, 'Breaking the Art and Science Standoff' in Real Time, No. 36, Sydney, April 2000

1999
- Suzy Freeman-Greene, 'The Sounds of Human Effort' in The Age, Melbourne, September 25, 1999
- Anne Susskind, 'Public Intimacy' in The Bulletin, Sydney, May 4 1999
-Brigid Smyth, '5000 Calls' in Patrick Bingham-Hall, Olympic Architecture, Watermark Press, Sydney 1999
- 'Sound in Museums' in Insite, Melbourne, December 1999
- Sonia Leber, 'Electronic Observatory' in Interior Cities, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, Melbourne 1999

1998
- Ross Gibson, 'Something Strange Disturbing Us Every Day' Week of Experimental Cinema catalogue, Madrid, 1998
- Matthew Moore, 'Forest with More than the Sounds of Silence' in The Sydney Morning Herald, July 17 1998
- Anne Susskind, 'Creating a Bridge Over Troubled Water' in The Sydney Morning Herald, March 23 1998
- Gary Barker, 'A Sense of Space and Movement' in The Age, Melbourne, November 6 1998

1994
- Sonia Leber, 'Earwitness: Excursions in Sound' in Experimenta '94 catalogue, Melbourne, October 1994
- Sonia Leber, 'Earwitness: Excursions in Sound' in Mesh, No. 4, Melbourne, 1994
- Backhouse, Megan 'Sounds Like…' in The Age, November 11 1994
- Anna Clabburn, 'Wherefore Art Thou Genre' in Storm, Melbourne, November 1994
- Marie Sierra-Hughes, 'Lending an Ear to Sound' in The Herald Sun, December 2 1994
- AnnMarie Johnson, 'Earwitness News' in RealTime No. 3, October 1994

1991
- Sonia Leber, 'Watching Films, Making Films' in Cantrills Filmnotes, No. 65, Melbourne October 1991
- 'Doubtful Invitation' in Oberhausen International KurzFilmTage catalogue, April 1991

1990
- Ann Pollock Berecry, 'Open Eyes are a Dream' in Aurora Australis catalogue, Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver 1990

1989
- 'History Takes Place' in Australian Perspecta catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1989

 

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