During my stay at the Museum of Innocence Mildura in November 2016 (as guest of the first MIM Artist-in-Residence, Ren Walters), I completed and installed my first visual artwork, called Order. This was not planned!

Music and sound are still very much a part of Order. The concept behind the work was to record the name of everyone who had performed in THIS Ensemble MkII (from early 2014 onwards). I spent some time creating a list participants, drawing on my own records and online documentation, photos, etc. Then I wrote each name on a brown paper lunch bag.

The original idea was to string them all up and suspend them with string, but when I first laid them out to photograph each bag together for documentation purposes, I liked how they looked and decided to leave them there on the floor. The next day, I gathered jacaranda petals from outside and scattered them over the bags (Mildura was alive with jacaranda bloom at the time). The piece was developing in stages.

Then I gathered up each bag, placing the petals in some of them as I did so, to hole-punch each corner and tie together with string.

The piece was then suspended in the central corridor of MIM for the last two days. I added a sonic element as well (see video below).

I am certainly not a visual artist, but it was great to have the opportunity to explore something new. I felt like it had a lot in common with my sound/performance practice as well – the centrality of process/stages, and the significance of objects/materials (brown paper has a significance for THIS Ensemble).