Liquid Architecture: Unheard relations

curated by Joel Stern

Amias Hanley, Thembi Soddell, Tina Stefanou, Xen Nhà

As part of the exhibition Site and Sound: Sonic art as ecological practice at McClelland, curator Simon Lawrie invited Liquid Architecture to stage a project critically responding to themes of sonic art, acoustic ecology, field recording, deep listening, and spatial sound, understood in the context of profound environmental crisis and instability.

Liquid Architecture, in turn, approached four artists—Amias Hanley, Xen Nhà, Thembi Soddell, Tina Stefanou—to work towards the realisation of the brief. Months of conversation, messaging, walking, field-tripping, recording, speculating, and other activities, undertaken collaboratively and individually, followed, and remain ongoing. Their collective project, Unheard Relations, comprises a polyvocal essay and script published in the exhibition catalogue and Disclaimer, alongside four new experimental audio-works, one by each artist, which were presented at the gallery on 20 March 2021, and online.

Simon Lawrie established and facilitated artist residencies at McClelland to aid in the development of these site-responsive works.