Aphids (Melbourne)
Sunday, 06 June 2010 19:24
Instrument artist Rosemary Joy
Video artist Peter Humble
Violin Yasutaka Hemmi (Japan)
Harp Takayo Matsumura (Japan)
Percussionists Eugene Ughetti, Matthias Schack-Arnott
Wood instrument construction Adam Stewart
Producer Thea Baumann
Founded in 1994, Aphids is a small, artist-led cultural organisation creating collaborations across artforms and borders. Based in Melbourne, Aphids undertakes cross-artform projects usually involving contemporary music, international cross-cultural exchanges and collaborations.
Aphids has worked with hundreds of artists in Australia and overseas, with backgrounds in music, theatre, performance, writing, puppetry, architecture, design, visual art, fashion, film, multimedia, digital art, dance, sound art and lighting.
Aphids has presented work in Australia, Asia, Europe, South Africa, Central America and the USA.
Aphids has a strong commitment to supporting artists through mentoring, project management, resource sharing and auspicing. This has been formalised in Aphids' Residencies and Mentoring Scheme for young and emerging artists working in music and cross-artform practice, established with the support of the Sidney Myer Fund.
DAVID YOUNG
David was the Artistic Director of Aphids since co-founding the company in 1994. In 2010 he took up the Artistic Directorship of Chamber Made Opera (www.chambermadeopera.com), and will remain involved with Aphids as Artistic Advisor.
David composes for and co-curates cross-artform projects. These have included curating the Aphids Reel Music Festival which also featured the premiere of Waiting To Turn Into Puzzles, a music/film work with Louise Curham, performed by Ensemble Offspring. Schallmachine 06 & 07 took place in Melbourne and Basel, with percussionist Fritz Hauser and architect Boa Baumann. Other collaborative projects include Ricefields, an electro-acoustic installation/performance which toured Australia, France and Japan; Radio 1, percussion/theatre event featuring the world premiere live performance of Beckett's radio play of the same name; Maps, a music theatre film text collaboration between Aphids and its sister company in Denmark with performances in Melbourne (November 2000) and Copenhagen (October 2002); and Music at Mt Egerton in an old clay mine in regional Victoria, Australia.
ROSEMARY JOY
Rosemary Joy makes miniature sculptural percussion instruments for site specific works, usually for very small audiences. Rosemary´s current projects include System Building, inspired by and performed in Watertoren West (Noorderzon Festival, Groningen), Radialsystem V (Berlin), Melbourne Recital Centre and Sydney´s CarriageWorks. Rosemary also recently collaborated on a project with Mexican percussionist Evaristo Aguilar inspired by the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.
Rosemary's work has been performed by percussionists including Fritz Hauser (Switzerland), Bob Becker (Canada), Evaristo Aguilar (Mexico), Slagwerkgroep Den Haag (Netherlands), Diego Espinosa (Mexico) and Australian musicians Graeme Leak, Vanessa Tomlinson, Eugene Ughetti (Speak Percussion), Timothy Constable, John Arcaro and Matthias Schack-Arnott.
Rosemary was a founding board member for Rawcus theatre company and is currently a member of the City of Port Phillip Cultural Development Committee. In 2009, Rosemary received a Goethe Institut scholarship. She undertook an artist residency at Stiftung Kunstlerdorf Schöppingen in Germany in 2008.
PETER HUMBLE
Having begun making short films while studying a Diploma in Television & Sound Production in 1991 Peter has continued to work in all aspects of production and post production including music composition & sound design/foley for various screen projects. After 1991 he concentrated on music for a number of years. During that time he specialised in drums and percussion and developed a unique electro acoustic approach to the drum kit.
From January 2002 to March 2003 he was full time percussionist/composer with Circus Oz touring to Brisbane, regional Queensland and Brasil.
From 1994 to 2001 he was joint composer and performer for Melbourne based Puppet Company Snuff Puppets. During that time they performed at many of the major festivals around Australia and toured to Japan where they conducted workshops with students and performed in Osaka and Kyoto. In 1997 Snuff Puppet Band released their self-titled CD featuring original music from selected Snuff Puppet shows. In 1999 ABC New Music Australia ran a nation wide improvisation competition in which Snuff Puppet Band were awarded runner up.
In 2000 Peter performed at the Ocho Rios Jazz Festival in Jamaica with Sydney group Toni Nation, performed with Circus Oz during their London season at Sadlers Wells and collaborated with Crying in Public Places on their show Skin as sound designer and real time sampler, which premiered at the 2000 Adelaide Festival and subsequently toured nationally. As well, he received development grants from the Australia Council and the Ian Potter Foundation to further his studies in percussion and theatre music composition in New York with Bobby Previte.
EUGENE UGHETTI
Eugene Ughetti is a Melbourne based percussionist, composer and conductor. He has studied with significant artists from most continents and completed an Honors degree in Classical Percussion at the Victorian College of the Arts. His professional experience is diverse but his particular passion is for new music and hybrid-arts collaboration.
Eugene has been a member of the Australian Youth Orchestra, Sydney Symphonia, Geminiani Orchestra, UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra and is a casual Percussionist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He has been a percussionist at the Pacific Music Festival in Japan from 2000, and last returned by invitation in 2002. He has worked under conductors Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Pierre Boulez, James Levine, Stephan Asbury, Sergei Gergiev, Neemi Jarvi, Franck Ollu, Markus Stenz, Denis Cohen and Yuri Temirkanov.
Eugene has toured throughout Europe, Asia and North America. He has appeared as a soloist with both the Melbourne Symphony and Victorian College of the Arts Orchestras. In 1998 he was an ABC Young Composer and ABC Young Artist.
MATTHIAS SCHACK-ARNOTT
Graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School in 2006, Matthias Schack-Arnott has had experience playing in a host of orchestral, improvisational and new music ensembles. Matthias has worked with instrument builders, sculptors, dancers, composers and sound designers, and has performed with among others Speak Percussion, Glass Percussion Project, Aphids, Australian Youth Orchestra, Robert Vincs Trio, and is a casual percussionist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, Matthias took part in an international exchange in spending a year in Denmark studying with Professor Gert Mortensen and Gert Sorensen (Principal Percussion, Danish Radio Symhpony). Since 2007, Matthias has been engaged in a mentorship program with Speak Percussion, one of Australia's leading percussive arts groups. He is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Music Performance at the Victorian College of the Arts.
THEA BAUMANN
Thea Mai Baumann is a curator, producer, and media artist. She has been involved in the delivery of programs, exhibitions, and symposia informed by cross-cultural relationships, networked and digital culture, nomadic forms of curatorship, and contemporary art emerging from the Asia-Pacific region. Between 2004-2006, Thea was Special Projects Officer/Producer for MAAP: Multimedia Art Asia Pacific - the Asia-Pacific's pre-eminent media arts festival. In 2004 she co-curated and coordinated Zero Gravity, a live audio-visual broadcast between the Singapore Art Museum and Brisbane's The Block.
She was awarded an Emerging Producer In Community position in 2006-2007 through the Australia Council for the Arts for her work fusing new media and CCD practice. In 2006, she curated, directed, and produced Manhua Wonderlands - a rhizomic multi-platform and multi-locational media arts initiative that linked up over 330 contemporary art spaces, libraries, galleries, museums, pearltea cafes, video stores, karaoke clubs, and Japanese purikura stickerbooths in a simultaneous viewing experience. Manhua Wonderlands explored digital and virtual (sub)culture(s) and was produced and presented as part of MAAP's Out of the Internet Festival.
In 2007, Thea completed an Asialink residency with the internationally acclaimed Artist-Led Initiative a little blah blah in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where she curated, directed, and produced The Last Vestige - a floating junk boat art experience and intervention on the Mekong River, and a series of satellite screenings of Australian video art in Saigonese nightclubs. The Last Vestige explored contemporary curatorial models related to theories of the Temporary Autonomous Zone and piracy.
In 2008, Thea was awarded a Brisbane Lord Mayor's Fellowship to live in Beijing, China and research Asian contemporary art and performance for a 12 month period. Thea currently sits on Nextwave's Curatorial Advisory Committee for the 2010 Festival No Risk Too Great. She is also involved as curator of new media works presented as part of Nextwave's key note projects Sports Club 1: Commitment and Sweat = My Personal Best taking place at the George Knott Athletic Track, and Sports Club 2: The Arena taking place at the MCG.
Performing at: Yakumo Honjin
- Fri 2nd July & Sat 3rd July
- Exhibition Tues 29th June – Sat 10th July
- KickArts, Gallery 2,CoCA, Abbott Stt
- Fri 2nd - From 6.00pm short excerpts live.
- Sat 3rd - full performance 2.30, 3.15, 4.00pm
- Bookings essential for Sat 3rd: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , (07) 4050 9496