The Lure of Echo_ media release


“Sarah Duyshart is one of Melbourne’s very talented younger artists and any new
installation by her is to be keenly anticipated.”
Brett Sheehy, Artistic Director, MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

The Lure of Echo is an intimate and immersive sound sculptural installation premiering as the first major solo installation by Melbourne artist Sarah Duyshart. It is the first visual artwork to occupy the basement of one of Melbourne’s oldest heritage listed city buildings, 673 Bourke St Melbourne, now housing philanthropic organization Donkey Wheel. Exploring the junction between ethereality and materiality, The Lure of Echo is exhibiting as part of the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Entering down a stairwell into a series of dark arches and corridors the viewer encounters several large spot lit sieves. Atmospheric aural reverberations translate into physical vibrations that gently sift flour to the floor. The sounds are based on field recordings captured within and around the building, including the heritage cage lift. They consist of rhythmic textured arrangements where isolated meditative ambient bass is interwoven with delicate subtle microsounds.

Duyshart’s temporal installations utilise ephemeral materials such as flour and ash. Her viewers are encouraged to consider the impossibility of holding time still. Flour sifts as time disintegrates. Translating the immaterial to the material, The Lure of Echo presents physical and aural echoes of the past providing the audience an opportunity to contemplate the visceral impact of what is unseen in our lives. Moving through the historical basement, the viewer is prompted to engage in a critical reflection of both their internal and external landscapes, that of the past and potentially their future.

Duyshart explains ‘It was important to me from the outset to activate a temporarily abandoned space. I wanted to inject a poetic vitality into a hidden fragment of the city’s past’.

Specific to the historical infrastructure of Melbourne, the gothic inspired basement of 673 Bourke St carries memories of its many incarnations, the storeroom for Melbourne’s first Tramways Co., Nuns’ quarters for the Sisters of Mercy and more recently a location for the feature film starring Hugo Weaving, The Tender Hook.

The Lure of Echo perfectly resonates with the space it inhabits. Fran Westmore from Donkey Wheel anticipates “the meditative calm that will inhabit the buildings deep recesses allowing the viewer to connect and reflect”. Brokered by Creative Spaces, the Donkey Wheel Building's owners were introduced to the artist, and a disused space was transformed into a unique location for an arts project. Duyshart's installation is a great example of the collaboration between private building owners, Creative Spaces and the City of Melbourne's Art Grant program, to assist artists to deliver their projects in unique and affordable spaces around the City.

Sarah Duyshart is a Melbourne based artist and has exhibited video works internationally in New York and Moscow. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from RMIT in 2008. She was the recipient of the 2008 RMIT Graduate Drawing Award and the winner of 2007 Luminous Textile Awards, RMIT University, Melbourne. She has just returned from her involvement in Venice Agendas at the 53rd Venice Biennale and from Tibet in July with Metasenta where she traveled several days by train with an international group of artists and writers, who then exhibited both in Lhasa, Tibet and Guangzhou in China.