Voice of Sea, Voice of Sky

To The Heart - Video - Julia Davis + Jane Sheldon

Voice of Sea, Voice of Sky is a collaborative series between multidisciplinary artist Julia Davis and soprano and composer Jane Sheldon. Through video, sound, and live performance, Julia Davis and Jane Sheldon invite audiences to experience the interplay of breath, the ocean, and the landscapes in a meditative and transformative way.

The works emerge from their shared history of exploring transformative states of being – Davis in visual art, Sheldon in music – particularly those set in motion by a submission of the body to the landscape.

Two videos TO THE HEART: A CALLING and SEAM will be on view from 13-15 September.

Live performance: Two Worlds

On Saturday 14 September Australian American composer and soprano Jane Sheldon will perform live within the exhibit, singing a new layer of music woven into her sound design for SEAM.

Join us for these special performances

Session 1 at 4pm. Tickets: Two Worlds: Julia Davis & Jane Sheldon - Lake Macquarie Arts
Session 2 at 7pm. Tickets: Two Worlds: Julia Davis & Jane Sheldon - Lake Macquarie Arts

TO THE HEART: A Calling

Julia Davis + Jane Sheldon 2020

Single channel video + sound

TO THE HEART: A Calling is the first in a collaborative series between multidisciplinary artist Julia Davis and soprano and composer Jane Sheldon. The work explores nature's forces operating at extremes of scale and was filmed from a small boat, several kilometres from the Southernmost tip of the Tasmanian coast from an altitude of 150 meters. The vocabulary of the breath sounds was recorded at a distance of just a few centimetres from the mouth, bringing the rhythms of the Ocean's immense power into evolving dialogue with the rhythms of the body, inviting extreme intimacy between these two forces and reminding us of the body’s continuity with the rest of the natural world.

SEAM

Julia Davis + Jane Sheldon 2022

2 channel video + sound

SEAM, the second collaboration between multimedia artist Julia Davis and composer Jane Sheldon, is a meditative 2 channel cinematic video with surround sound.

The work is concerned with embodiment, fragility, the infinite and the temporal. It explores the relationship of our physiology to the natural world, its eternal state of flux, and its present state of vulnerability. Binaries of light and dark, the seen and unseen, invite us to consider our changing relationship with the land and its unstable edges. Through the exchange between the real and digitally imagined play of these binaries, the observer is invited to notice their own habits of listening and viewing and to experience a gently transformative state of being.

Davis and Sheldon use sound and imagery as (material) sources of energy, drawing our attention to natural forces of vastly different scales, from respiration in the body to the forces that build and erode the continent. Through breath, interacting layers of sustained pitch, and moving image, they consider the resonance with ourselves, others and the world, inviting us to imagine how we may reside in the continuity of place-creation and place-erosion, and the role we each have in both processes.

This project unites Davis and Sheldon in their first fully collaborative endeavour and marks a significant shift in their individual practices. The work emerges from their shared history of exploring transformative states of being – Davis in visual art, Sheldon in music – particularly those set in motion by a submission of the body to the landscape.

Main image: Julia Davis + Jane Sheldon To the Heart: A Calling 2020 (still). Single channel video, sound. Courtesy the artists.