CAGEWORKS
DECIBEL NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
HAM DARROCH
NICCI HAYNES
KENSUKE TODO
KATE VASSALLO
CURATED BY ALEXANDER BOYNES
John Cage (1912 – 1992) was an American avant-garde composer and music theorist who pushed boundaries in the field of music. He was known for pioneering indeterminacy in music, creating electroacoustic music, and exploring non-standard use of musical instruments. Cage became a prominent figure in the post-war avant-garde movement and is often regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th Century. He had a significant impact on the development of modern dance through his close association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage’s romantic partner for most of their lives, however his influence extended beyond the realm of music and Dance. He was a pioneer in the use of chance and randomness, his most well-known composition is perhaps 4’33” (1952), a remarkable piece of music that instructs performers not to play their instruments for the entire duration of the piece’s three movements. The piece consists of the sounds of the environment heard by the listeners. This composition challenges traditional ideas of musicianship and musical experience, making it a popular and controversial topic in musicology and the broader fields of art and performance. For Cage, 4’33” represented the essence of his idea that any auditory experience could be considered music, and reflected his interest in Zen Buddhism, which he had studied since the late 1940s.
Apart from his pioneering work with 4’33”, Cage is also recognised for his contributions to the development of the prepared piano, where the piano’s sound is modified by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers. He wrote several dance-related works and a few concert pieces using the prepared piano, including Sonatas and Interludes (1946-1948).
Cage’s inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas continue to profoundly influence creative practitioners, with Cageworks exploring some of these outputs in the form of visual art by local and interstate artists. This exhibition showcases some of the playful and insightful ways Australian artists, particularly Canberra artists, are building on Cage’s legacy: a largescale wall painting by Ham Darroch, an interactive technology-based work by Nicci Haynes, ‘silent sculptures’ by Kensuke Todo, and chance-based drawing installations by Kate Vassallo, alongside visual scores, recordings and a bespoke John Cage Variations App by Decibel New Music Ensemble.
Cageworks emerged from a series of ongoing discussions I had with fellow artist Ham Darroch. Our conversations delved deep into Cage’s illustrious career, drawing parallels with local artists who were similarly influenced by his theories. During these discussions, I also familiarised myself with Decibel New Music Ensemble’s John Cage Variations App, which sparked a desire to include the group in the exhibition one way or another.
A particularly intriguing discovery was Cage’s creation of intricate scores specifically tailored for the Carillon—an instrument positioned near CCAS’ residence on Lake Burley Griffin. In a light-hearted manner, Darroch suggested the idea of reaching out to the Carillon authorities and requesting a performance of these unique pieces. To our disappointment, the avant-garde and discordant nature of Cage’s compositions did not align with their preferences, however we found amusement in the thought of the Carillon delivering a daily recital of 4’33”.
Despite this playful setback, the elements of an exhibition began to take shape, and we witnessed the interweaving of seemingly disparate artistic practices into a cohesive whole. The threads of connection between various creative endeavours started knitting together right before our eyes.
Ham Darroch, an artist based in Canberra who works across sculpture, painting, and performance, responded directly to the methodologies used in some of Cage’s most seminal work, Variations. Darroch earned a Master of Fine Arts (research) from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, and a Bachelor of Arts from the Australian National University’s School of Art and Design (ANU SoA&D). For Cageworks Darroch has created largescale wall paintings and painting series that connect with the human scale and the perception of space. In recent history he has also created sculptures from altered and discarded objects, conceptually redirecting them through optical effects of geometric colour to reveal new meanings that are influenced by the vernacular and art history. Presented in Cageworks is a new series of paintings made directly onto the gallery walls titled Chambers (1-5) (2022), which sets several spatial questions into play. The five chambers each containing colours which visually sound, advance or recede inside a rhomboid window and operate as a group. Some are more silent, yet they are all present like a musician patiently awaiting their part to play in the score. Their placement on the gallery walls relates to Darroch’s physical proportions, both in the composition and scale.
Although it is not the dominant concept within the work, there is a chance element introduced into the process that conceptually links the work to Cage’s embrace of I Ching, also known as the Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese divination text and philosophical work. It is one of the oldest Chinese classics and has been used as a source of wisdom and inspiration for thousands of years. The I Ching is based on the principles of yin and yang and uses a system of hexagrams (six-line figures) to represent different states and movements of energy. By interpreting the hexagrams and their changing lines, readers can gain insight into the nature of their situation and receive guidance for making decisions and navigating life’s challenges. The idea is to let go of your own intentions and let the oracle take over. Our intentions are often influenced by our likes and dislikes, but without intentions, we can create something that is more akin to the organic outcomes of nature. The I Ching can guide us in creating music or art, as well as help us make decisions in our lives. Cage used the I Ching to free himself from having to make choices, except for deciding which questions to ask.
Darroch’s two paintings on canvas - Fairground (2021) and Mask (Noh) (2022) continue to explore his curiosity and interest in human scale and the perception of space and draw on the teachings of I Ching as a compositional tool. The abstract paintings include the fan-like motif which Darroch has been utilising in his practice for some time to create a dynamic pictorial depth. The motif itself is resonate as a ‘Cubit’ which is an ancient form of measurement, from the tip of your middle finger to your elbow, and its gradients look to harmonise with each other in opposition to the white space. As Darroch states, “The grey is the obstacle which is not always a bad thing to bump into.”
Image HAM DARROCH
Mask (Noh), 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 153 x 137cm
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Above HAM DARROCH Chambers (1-5), 2022, Acrylic on wall, dimensions variable
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Nicci Haynes originally studied science at University College Cardiff in Wales, before later undertaking visual art studies at the ANU SoA&D. Based in Canberra, she has a diverse artistic practice that involves various mediums, including printmaking, drawing, artist books, experimental films, and electronic installations. Her work explores movement and the body through performance-drawing and collaborations with musicians, dancers, and poets.
Her most recent work produced for Cageworks titled Random Radio (2022), builds on a series of installations that began in 2017 with Soundcheck, an exhibition held at Australian National Capital Artists Inc. Gallery, which featured a chaotic construction of antennae and bare electronics that captured the invisible radio signals that surround us.
Random Radio is constructed as a keyboard, its colour coded ‘keys’ connected to analogue radios, which make audible the signals that happen to be transmitting at that moment. This unpredictable instrument, which draws on Cage’s use of chance as a compositional method, does not attempt to bring order out of chaos or produce tuneful sound, but rather serves to awaken our senses to the unseen sonic environment surrounding us. In the gallery setting, the audience is invited to ‘play’ the work as they see fit – some happy with a brief push on a button or two and a smile, with others spending long periods of time creating live compositions out of the chance sounds.
To complement Random Radio, Haynes devised a visual score for three performers to follow: a random selection of colours was projected onto the gallery wall, instructing the players to press the corresponding key of the same colour. The randomly generated score results in a distinct and unforeseeable performance on each occasion. On the day of the work’s premiere, there was considerable speculation regarding whether news of the Queen of England’s death would dominate the airwaves during the performance. True to Cage’s characteristically unpredictable style, not a single mention of her passing reached the listeners’ ears. Instead, an impromptu rendition by the band Queen unexpectedly pierced through the auditory collage.
Image NICCI HAYNES Random Radio, 2022 Mixed media, dimensions variable
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Hanging on the opposing wall to Haynes, and taking cues from visual chance (instead of sound), is Kate Vassallo, a visual artist of Maltese heritage based in Canberra. Completing her studies at the ANU SoA&D in 2010, Vassallo works across painting, drawing, installation, and performance, and utilises rules and parameters to develop her artworks, often employing repetitive processes that evolve gradually over time. Her works showcase a structured framework, evident in the use of formal geometric shapes and straight lines. While she plans and formulates steps for her pieces, she allows room for agency, intuition, and chance to have a role in the creative process. The composition and shapes that emerge in her works are influenced by chance rather than strict control. Creating her artworks is a laborious and passionate endeavour that demands considerable time, mental focus, and physical energy to construct the surfaces. Through her abstract visual language and the specific material qualities she has developed, she aims to evoke soft sensations of light, space, time, memory, and nostalgia. Additionally, she explores abstraction to visualise process, labour, control, chance, freedom, and agency.
In 2018 Vassallo embarked on an exploration of process-oriented repetition and chance-based building systems with her series Chance Forms. This series exhibited in Cageworks features a grid of 18 distinctive drawings, serving as a creative tool for her to move away from rigid and pre-planned abstract forms. To initiate these drawings, Vassallo scattered sunflower seeds onto paper, using their landing spots as starting points to construct the solid, geometric forms. This simple act introduced an organic element into an otherwise structured set of instructions. Each grid piece followed its own unique rules and logic, finding inventive ways to connect the random points together. She found excitement in the way chance disrupted the predictability of the forms, resulting in something fresh and unplanned. Also featured in Cageworks are 32 coloured pencil drawings that form Field of arrows pointing at nothing (202021), each started with a random scatter of three or four points. Over the course of one year, these points were segmented in different ways and filled in with thousands of fine, straight, ruled lines. The logic that sits behind the artwork was hugely important in its making, dictating the colours, ordering of pencils and number of segments on each sheet. It was laboriously planned out, executed to a level that became physically and emotionally draining to complete. But now, as an artwork inviting viewers to visually dissect it, the specifics of these rules become almost immaterial. It is the materiality of this controlled drawing process that pulls focus. The repetitious nature of the markmaking becomes an abstract visual record of time and labour, directional lines and the placement of shapes are intended to guide the viewer’s eye across the artwork, never settling in any one place.
Image NICCI HAYNES
Random Radio Performance, 9 September 2022
Performed by Nicci Haynes, Nathan Hughes and Saskia Haalebos
Photo by Alexander Boynes
Image KATE VASSALLO
Field of arrows pointing at nothing, 2020-21 Coloured pencil on paper, 32 sheets of A3 paper
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Image KATE VASSALLO
Field of arrows pointing at nothing (detail), 2020-21 Coloured pencil on paper, 32 sheets of A3 paper
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Image KATE VASSALLO Chance Forms, 2018, Coloured pencil on paper, 18 sheets of A3 paper
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Within earshot of Vassallo’s artworks are video and sound pieces by Decibel New Music Ensemble, a six-piece collective that focuses on integrating acoustic and electronic instruments in chamber music performances. Founded in Western Australia in 2009 and now evenly based between Melbourne and Perth, the group consists of Louise Devenish, Cat Hope, Stuart James, Tristen Parr, Lindsay Vickery, and Aaron Wyatt.
Decibel is a widely acclaimed group renowned for their expertise in interpreting graphic notations and leading the development of digital score formats for composition and performance. One of their notable achievements is the ongoing advancement of the highly successful Decibel ScorePlayer App for iPad, which facilitates synchronised performances of graphic notations. While rooted in the Western art music tradition, Decibel endeavours to transcend stylistic boundaries through commissioned works and performance approaches that emphasise the fusion of acoustic and electronic sounds.
In 2012, Decibel developed a program to celebrate Cage’s centenary, performing the eight works that comprise the Variations series (composed between 1960 and 1978). Many of these scores require performers to manipulate provided materials by cutting them up, arranging them on a page, and taking measurements of various parameters that inform the score’s performance. Decibel automated these processes, resulting in the creation of the iPad App called The Decibel John Cage Variations. This App instantly undertakes these procedures, presenting them for performance.
Cageworks showcases video works that demonstrate the output of the App, automating the paper score for Cage’s Variations III (1963). This score involves cutting out circles from printed or transparent paper and dropping them onto a blank page. The performer plays the connected circles, while the app automates the process by highlighting unconnected circles in blue and removing them from the page. In Cage’s Variations II (1961), data generated from measuring perpendicular distances is used to create a scrolling, proportionally notated screen score. The video displays several different versions of the score for performance. Performers play the figures as they pass by the orange vertical line. The length of the horizontal lines indicates the note or figure duration, the thickness represents volume, the density (or shade) indicates timbral density, the number signifies the number of events, and the height of the line on the score denotes pitch. In Cage’s Variations VI (1966), the paper score involves cutting out shapes printed on transparent paper and placing them on a blank page to indicate the arrangement of materials, specifying the number and placement for a performance. Half circles represent sound sources (players or machines), triangles represent speakers, and T shapes signify components (e.g., effects).
Left DECIBEL NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
John Cage Variations II (1961), 2022
Vinyl numbering on wall, 90 x 750cm
Overleaf, Left to Right DECIBEL NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
John Cage Variations III (1963), 2022
John Cage Variations II (1961), 2022
John Cage Variations VI (1966), 2022
Score instantiations from the ‘Decibel John Cage Variations’ App, digital video, dimensions and duration variable
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Image KENSUKE TODO waiting for an angel, 2022, steel, 13 x 29 x 34.5cm
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Kensuke Todo was born and grew up in Kyoto, Japan. He studied a Bachelor of Visual Art in Sculpture at Kyoto Seika University and first travelled to Australia in 1999 as an exchange student at ANU SoA&D. He later returned to pursue his Masters degree and has been living and working in Canberra since 2004. When he moved to Australia, it provided an opportunity for him to start anew and discover his true identity, greatly impacting his artistic approach. He found inspiration in the architecture and social culture of everyday city life, which is clearly evident in his artwork. His sculptures, predominantly crafted from mild steel and more recently bronze and brass, often lack human presence, despite drawing inspiration from man-made structures like ramps, escalators, highways, and aimless stairs. These pieces embody simplicity and highlight the contrast between modern Australian and traditional Japanese aesthetics, revealing a subtle beauty in ordinary, functional subjects. His artwork aims to convey the concept of “nothing and everything” simultaneously. He once described a formative experience that guided his practice as thus:
“Once I was sitting in a small empty room by myself. There were no windows except one ceiling light above my head. All of a sudden, the light went out and the room became pitch-dark. It was silent. I was waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but I couldn’t even see my hands. I felt claustrophobic. But then I started thinking that I am in an infinite space. There were no walls. There was no outside. I lost sense of space. I imagined my body was floating, or that my body didn’t even exist. I sat there in the darkness and let my mind wander and explore, until I came back to the small room again.”
Todo created the artworks featured in Cageworks during rolling Covid-19 lockdowns. The series, consisting of the angel, waiting for an angel, and becoming an angel (all from 2022), utilise a stylised staircase motif to convey a sense of ascent, weightlessness, and a hope to transcend the global restrictions and emotional burden of isolation. While these pieces may appear solemn given the backdrop of a worldwide pandemic, their austerity is cleverly contrasted and undermined by kindness (unconditional) (2021). At first glance, the artwork shares the same aesthetic sensibilities as the angel series. However, upon closer examination, the formal white cylinder placed on a steel slab reveals itself to be a ¾ scale plaster replica of a toilet roll. With a metaphorical wry smile, Todo acknowledges Cage, the master of silence and Zen, using the cultural capital synonymous with early lockdown panic buying. An elegantly crafted drawing of a cardboard tube hangs on the adjacent wall, representing the core (compassion) (2021) and paying tribute to the remnants of the most sought-after item during the Covid crisis.
Cageworks is an exhibition that seeks to captivate its audience by showcasing the lasting influence of John Cage’s inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas on creative practitioners. Through a diverse collection of visual, sound and performance art by both local and interstate artists, the exhibition celebrates the exploration of unconventional instrumentation and chance-driven creative output. Cageworks aims to serve as a testament to Cage’s visionary approach to creative practice, and the dynamic interpretations of his theories by Australian artists, highlighting their role in expanding and exploring his legacy within the realm of contemporary art.
Alexander Boynes
September
2022
Image KENSUKE TODO becoming an angel, 2022 Brass, steel, 16 x 42 x 16.5cm
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Image KENSUKE TODO the core (compassion), 2021 Graphite on paper, 38 x 28.5cm
Photo by Brenton McGeachie
Left HAM DARROCH
Fairground, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 198 x 198cm
Right HAM DARROCH
Mask (Noh), 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 153 x 137cm
