Excursions in Object-Oriented Polytexture

Liquid Architecture presents three distinct artists across three generations, all operating at the forefront of expanded music practice in Australia and abroad – Vanessa Tomlinson, Nat Grant and Yvette Agapow. Rooted in a mastery of percussion, all three artists exemplify an inherent curiosity for tactile and physical sound making by using and misusing instruments and found objects alike.

Vanesa Tomlinson is a percussionist-composer working in a solo capacity, as one half of Clocked Out, and in collaboration across artforms. Her work orbits broadly around extended approaches, site-specific investigations, minimalist reductions and a sense of embodied play. With a long history in experimental and improvised music she has toured the world for three decades, creating contexts for improvisation, premiering hundreds of works, performing at major international festivals, and sharing her knowledge as a teacher, mentor, director and arts advocate. Vanessa can be heard on Innova, Immediate, Room40, Etcetera, Jazzhead, Mode, Tzadik, Hathut and Clocked Out labels, and her articles appear in Leonardo, Contemporary Music Review, Intelligent Arts, URO Press and World Forum for Acoustic Ecology among others. She is Professor of Music, Griffith University.

Vanessa Tomlinson performs a selection of works including Still and Moving Paper, The Space Inside, and Bent Metal that explore her signature array of found objects, tamtam, vibraphone and treasured sound-making companions.

Dr. Nat Grant is a sound artist and producer working on unceded Wurundjeri country with more than 15 years experience in live performance, broadcast, digital arts, and community arts. Nat is a drummer, percussionist, and composer whose work focuses on multidisciplinary, long-form musical compositions, performance events and installations using traditional and graphic notation as well as improvisation. Nat is committed to strengthening connections between different communities, and particularly those that increase the presence of women and gender minority artists and musicians. The Hey Drums project has featured interviews with more than 160 Australian drummers since 2016, and the six season strong Prima Donna podcast, winner of a Victorian Community History award, features sonic portraits of pioneering Australian artists from all disciplines.

Yvette Ofa Agapow is a Meanjin-based experimental musician working at the intersection of noise, ambient, drone music and acoustic vocal and percussion improvisation. Combining these musical tendencies with an intentional approach to presentation and performance, she interrogates her personal relationship to pain, catharsis and feminine subjectivity.

Reba (dj) will select music before and between performances.

This event is generously supported by Creative Australia.