PLACELAB15: NOARLUNGA

Commissioned by The City of Onkaparinga, 2015

PLACELAB15: NOARLUNGA was the next stage of an ongoing working partnership between The City of Onkaparinga, the local curator Paul Gazzola and artist Nadia Cusimano. In this first iteration, the curatorial team have chosen an open thematic approach of MAPPING that encouraged the two invited artistic teams, working across sound and visual art-based practices to develop works that would ask people questions about the place in which the live.

Between April and June of 2015 a lively space of local involvement was generated through a series of new experiences in public participatory art works. The ensuing collection of video and audio recordings, created objects, drawings and performance evolved into a contemporary mapping of the cultural identity of people in the area. Highlighting as it exposes the multi-dimensional makeup of histories that forms the community of Onkaparinga.

PROJECTS & ARTISTIC TEAMS

WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? – Belle Bassin (VIC) & Dario Vacirca (SA/VIC) What are you thinking? is an interview-based sculptural project that encourages the public into conversations around what divides and connects us. Over the course of one month the artists were embedded in an unused shop within the centre creating a site and context for a multi-art exhibition that engaged passersby and invited guests to respond to a series of questions, provocations and tasks. Each week focused around an idea and an event developed out of an ongoing exchange with local participants. Over 3 weeks a series of outcomes across video, audio, object and performance were created, exposing the participants desires for what is next and their relationship to the unknown.

VERY LOCAL RADIO – Sasha Grbich (SA) & Heidi Angove (SA) Very Local Radio was a live internet radio broadcast and sound installation that explored the ways sound can be used to navigate and explore places. Tapping into the invisible and ephemeral community of radio listeners and the complex ecologies formed between people, things and places it collectively gathered the found sounds of the area. The broadcasts involved a portable Internet radio transmitter, built into a shopping trolley that become a tool to explore, meet and hand over the microphone to the community. By generating conversations, Very Local Radio, sought the active role of the public in the broadcasts and audioscapes as the project evolved.