Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey
Australian cross-disciplinary artists who situate our sound and music speciality across a wide range of performance and installation contexts. Our curiosity about sound and music in space and in culture has led to links with artists in dance, theatre, installation, film and public art nationally and internationally. We have worked together since 1993 and are based in Melbourne, Australia.
We create both large scale and intimate works.
Gauge is an investigation by a group of artists and scientists into weather, water and scale. Together with Cameron Robbins, Graeme Leak, Rosemary Joy (co-artists) and Dr Michael Roderick and Ass/Prof Adrian Pearce (scientists), we have created a synthesis of five disparate creative processes from sculpture, music, sound and new media, in discussion with leading experts from the fields of climate science and artificial intelligence. The work is currently in creative development stage supported by Inter-Arts and ArtsHouse and will be presented in November 2012.
The Seagull is a sound work in a boat. The work is experienced as a boat ride, with a specially installed audio system making the vessel itself an instrument for listening. The instrument and the work itself was commissioned by Four Winds Music Festival as an eighteen-month sonic investigation of the region of Bermagui, linking different strands and contested histories of the region within a situated listening. It is part of Four Winds Festival 2012.
Chamber Made Opera, the national chamber opera company commissioned us to write a Living Room Opera which premiered in May 2011. This new work, Dwelling Structure, takes the sound of the house as the absent protagonist. “perhaps the most beautifully judged site-specific work I have seen”Alison Croggon.
Our sound installation work, Music for Imagined Dances premiered at Dance Massive, the national dance festival, in March 2011, as did our score for Shaun McLeod’s dance work, The Weight of the Thing left its mark. We have recently completed the sound/music score for Kapyong by Foxtel, a major documentary by director Dennis Smith which premiered on Anzac Day, 2011.
Our mixed media sound installation work, epi-thet based on an ANAT Synapse Residency on sonifying genetic processes, premiered at Melbourne International Arts Festival in October, 2010 Constellation a durational exhibition with performance interruptions, a work we created for 12 contemporary Australian composers, was presented as part of Liquid Architecture, 2010, the national sound art festival and the New Music Network series and was invited to the Prague Quadrennial, June 2011 and was exhibited at the Australia Council of the Arts from September-December 2011.
We created and direct an ongoing field sound installation the megaphone project which toured nationally in 2009/2010 and to the JF Kennedy Center of Performing Arts, Washington DC and the National Mall, in 2011. www.themegaphoneproject.com
We created john cage’s musicircus for Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2007, and for MIAF 2008 an installation with Californian sound artist Alex Stahl (Pixar productions), Echolocation and a new duet for theatre, This Map is Not to Scale.
We have a long term collaborative practice with Malaysian dancer, Tony Yap, and Japanese visual artis Naomi Ota, whose most recent work Rasa Sayang had a highly acclaimed premier season at 45 Downstairs in April, 2010 and will be presented at KLPAC, Malaysia in 2012. Our collaborations have presented in Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Korea and Malaysia. Our new work Kekkai with Nottle Theatre, South Korea began development in December 2010, with further development at Bundanon and Monash University in August 2011. We plan to present Kekkai in South Korea in December 2012.
We are currently artists-in-tow at Footscray Community Arts Centre for 2011/2012 and working with FCAC to develop Weekly Ticket a public art project that places an artist at the train station for fifteen years.
Our awards include a GreenRoom Award for Outstanding Composition/sound design, many Green Room nominations, Melbourne International Arts Festival Award, ANAT Synapse Award, two Asialink Residencies in China and Japan and finalists in the Australian Dance Awards for outstanding achievement in independent dance and the ArtsHub awards. Tim has a PhD in music from Monash University and is currently lecturer in creativity and culture at Griffith University. We are the secretaries of New Music Network, the national peak body for new music in Australia: Madeleine is a board member of Melbourne Fringe, and is current Chair of the Community Partnerships panel of Arts Victoria.
In 2011 we were finalists for the APRA- AMCOS National awards for Excellence in Experimental Music and in 2012 were the winners of this award.