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EXHIBITION: The Pianola Collection | Bronwyn Calcutt

Wednesday, 13 September 2023 10:00
Sunday, 8 October 2023 16:00

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The Pianola Collection
Bronwyn Calcutt
The Residents Gallery
13th of September - 8th October 2023

ENCORE PERFORMANCE: Sunday 1 October 2pm onwards for our Spring Open Studios.

Melrose Se Lave will be performing alongside the Pianola rolls in The Residents Gallery.

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Bronwyn Calcutt is a Melbourne musician and emerging visual artist whose practice opens new hybrid spaces in which the languages of music and painting can interact.

The Pianola Collection has evolved from the fortuitous discovery by the artist of some old pianola rolls in an op shop. The rolls are a kind of music-made-visible that enable anyone to “play” the piano by pumping air bellows with their feet as the keys play themselves. Bronwyn’s family owned a pianola and as a child she found it magical.

Calcutt decided to give these precious found objects a new life and repurposed the rolls as printing stencils onto canvas producing complex and evocative markings from which she worked intuitively. Each piece evolved uniquely from the inherited code and textures of the printing process revealing imaginary worlds, organisms and entities.

Some works are created from scrolls printed onto large canvases, others transfer single verses onto paper, but most are developed onto the pianola rolls themselves.

Featured in this collection is a garment made of pianola roll fragments – the Song Cloak – to be worn by the persona of Melrose Se Lave who presides over the performance of certain paintings as scores, completing the cycle back into music again. Other paintings have a recorded companion song, inviting the viewer to see and hear the work simultaneously.

The collection thus sits in a terrain traversing music, visual art and performance, each arising from and woven into the other.

Artist bio

Bronwyn Calcutt is an artist whose practice traverses music, visual art and performance. Originally trained in architectural design and music, her work over forty years has embraced musical direction, set design and play-writing for professional theatre companies, performing one-woman shows that have toured nationally, production of albums of original music, and the formation and direction of community choirs.

Currently completing a Master of Fine Art at RMIT, her most recent work aims to open new hybrid spaces in which the languages of music and painting can interact and enrich each other, creating a multi-sensory experience for the viewer.