Jacqui O'Reilly (AUS/NZ) w/ Rob Thorne
Jacqui O'Reilly is a performing artist based at Church St Studios in Sydney, producing electro acoustic compositions with highly processed vocals, field recordings, synth and with a deep interest in the potential of immersive sound as a means of reparative connection.
Quiet Constellation (2021-24) is an ongoing multimedia performance work and installation and a creative response to what has happened in the past and what can happen in the future to regenerate land, place, identity and relations. The landscape used in the work was filmed on location at Ōwhiro Bay, a place with connections to multiple iwi. For the greater part of the 20th century privatised extractive industry quarried sand and shingle from the area resulting in severe ecological damage. The land was purchased by Wellington City Council in 2000 and regeneration of diverse coastal vegetation continues, honouring tangata whenua under the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi
Quiet Constellation, previously known as Return from Erasure, was initially exhibited as a short video at the Crevice Communities Exhibition (2021) online. In 2022, a performance work by the same name was developed in residence at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists in Sydney, Australia and performed at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery NSW. Research behind the work was presented at Charles Sturt University's Creative Practice Circle Symposium (2022). Quiet Constellation continues to evolve and question past and present relations between people, place, media and perception, through deep listening, performance and mediated sound and image.
https://www.jacquioreilly.com/
Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu) is a composer, performer of Taonga Pūoro, fusing modern looping technology and traditional Māori flutes and horns made from stone, bone, shell and wood. His debut solo album Whaia te Maramatanga (Rattle Records) is a deeply felt and highly concentrated conversation between the past and the present - a musical passage of identity and connection. Rob has over 25 years performance experience in bands and solo, predominantly within alternative rock, free noise, experimental, and improvisational sound art. His work since 2001 with traditional Māori musical instruments has seen him complete an MA in Social Anthropology, and since 2008, incorporate this diverse experience to create long, ambient compositions using loops, blending the modern with the ancient.
https://www.robthorne.co.nz/
Special thanks to Creative New Zealand for supporting Pyramid Club's programme
