Transpoes (1994)

The glasshouse was an early 20th century building with old plantings and signage.

The work made reference to celebrity plantings by musicians, such as Dame Nellie Melba and Ignace Paderewski, in that garden. In one corner of the glasshouse, camouflaged by a cascading plant, hang three 1920's women's shoes. One shoe contains a small speaker; the other (pictured here) contains the stamen of an antherium; and above the two is a shoe constructed as a 'wasp's nest'.

The recording you hear was made in the glasshouse, as various objects (not pictured here) were sounding together. Sound sources: bird calls performed in the indigenous gumleaf tradition by Herb Patten, and in the 'new style' by Malaysian born Australian Golden Gumleaf Champion, Virgil Reutens; calls by Janet Shaw, Australian Bird Calling Champion; and piano phrases from 'The Prophet Bird' played by Paderewski.

The relations of seduction...and the species connectedness practiced through mimicry, among natures and cultures and territories, among other things, become vertiginously provocative". (Doug Kahn, in RealTime 8-August-September 1995)

Artists

• Delys and Grounds

Event

• Earwitness: Excursions in Sound (1994)

Site

• Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne