Play Me Mend Me
As part of Anita Johnson Larkin’s exhibition “Come to me without a word” at the Wollongong City Gallery in October 2020, I was invited to perform an improvisation on her sculpture “Play Me, Mend Me”. The sculpture is a skilful combination of an unfinished violin and a wooden crutch, in Larkin’s signature style. It has custom made strings that stretch it’s full 1.6m length, creating 3 sounding sections of the instrument - each with its own tuning and unique timbre.
The improvisation was performed by attaching a contact mic to one of the instruments two bridges and connecting it to a delay pedal, used to create layers of this unique sounding instrument.
The performance was filmed by the Wollongong Art Gallery as part of an interview with the artist (performance introduced at 37:00):
Initial improvised performances
I was also invite to play the instrument as part of the same exhibition at The Australian Design Centre, Sydney in March 2021. Shown are photos from this performance:
