Garden of Australian Dreams, images courtesy of the National Museum of Australia, graphic design by Ashley Simonetto
Breathing Space – a rewilding in sound
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.
The sound garden is inspired by texts by Alexis Wright – activist, author, documentary maker and member of the Waanyi Nation from the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Her words are heard, whispered, and spoken by a chorus of voices of women and gender nonconforming people aged 6 - 87, and are interwoven with choral song, environmental field recordings, percussive accompaniments, and composed music. With speakers discreetly distributed throughout the garden, the entire space quietly resonates and beckons visitors, emanating life. It draws visitors into a reverie of place, and a meditation on their own relationship to land and listening, and celebrates fragile ecologies – of species, language, Country, culture.
Genevieve worked with over 70 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).
Creative team consisted of: Genevieve Lacey (composer & creator), Alexis Wright (writer), Ruth Little (associate artist), Jim Atkins (sound design), Martel Ollerenshaw – Arts & Parts (executive producer), Linda Kent (visual artist), Paul Lim – Additive (technical production manager), Ashley Simonetto (branding and graphic design), Jared Yapp (audio research), Katherine Tonkin (spoken voice consultant), Jess Zhang (cultural consultant) and Tom McKeand (audio system programmer).
Breathing Space in the Garden of Australian Dreams, National Museum of Australia, Canberra / Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri Country – permanently open to the public from 31 March 2023.
A CD released by ABC Classics is available on all streaming services.
Read Chloe Hooper’s article Scored Earth about Breathing Space.