Madelynne Cornish – Support Material
Madelynne Cornish is an audiovisual artist and curator. She documents the effects of climate on natural and constructed environments, and the social dynamics informing remote communities. Her work employs duration, landscape and stillness as a means of responding to the temporal and spatial morphology of place. Madelynne’s multi-layered artworks are reflections of how humans engage with and shape their environment. In addition to her practice Madelynne is the co-founder for the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, an independent arts initiative that facilitates cultural projects investigating the history and ecology of the Australian Alps.
SELECTED WORKS
Installation Documentation
Photo documentation: Tobias Titz
Presented as a multiscreen and sound environment DENSITIES guides the audience through a series of forests located in the Mänttä environs. All but one are commodified landscapes used for forestry. Upon first glance, some of these manufactured environments look natural and abundant but it eventually becomes evident that they lack the biodiversity of an intact forest landscape. The intent of the installation is to highlight the complex, and often contradictory aspects of environmentally responsible forest management
Video - Excerpts
MUTED LANDSCAPE is a single channel audiovisual work that challenges the perception of nature as pure and unspoiled. The work investigates Mänttä's [FInland] lakes and manufactured forested landscape that conceals an assorted range of industries used to exploit them. The still winter landscape of snow-covered trees and frozen lakes provide a beautiful and tranquil setting. However, embedded in the landscape are high tension power lines, paper mills, and a sewage plant discharging raw effluent into the water system. While the snow-covered landscape appears unspoiled and natural, the soundscape reveals the unsettling incursion of degradation, which is taking place through industrial practices latently immersed within the topography. MUTED LANDSCAPE explores the tension between what is seen and what is heard to challenge the viewer's experience and interpretation of the landscape.
Single-channel work for large monitor and headphones. Duration 15 min
BLACK LAKE was conceived during a six week residency in Kununurra, East Kimberley. The work explores ideas of beauty and the sublime. It challenges notions of perception, including ways of seeing, how we see and what we see. BLACK LAKE is a temporal meditation of the atmospheric effects of haze over Lake Kununurra generated by wildfires burning out of control around the township. The video is comprised of a triptych of images arranged to reflect Chinese landscape painting which privileges continuous form through the use of scrolls. While the video may initially appear still, shifts in the landscape produced by the swirling haze and rippling water provides a subtle sense of change
Silent work designed for large scale screening using multiple projectors
TWO VALLEYS focuses on Pretty and Rocky Valley reservoirs located in the Bogong High Plains. Both catchments are shrouded by rolling fog and are barely perceptible. The atmospheric conditions obfuscating the infrastructure and landscape serve as a metaphor for the shifting priorities and practices of energy producers. The reservoirs are evidence of the first hydro scheme on mainland Australia, which provided the knowledge and expertise for larger schemes including the Snowy River.
The accompanying soundtrack consists of field recordings and electronics. The complete audio/visual work was exhibited in the group exhibition “CURRENT” at Murray Arts Museum Albury, 2015. Presentation method consisted of large monitors on opposing walls, each with it’s own soundtrack listened to on headphones
WAKING DREAMS was conceived during a six week residency in Kununurra, East Kimberley. The work explores the shifting space between time and memory. It uses composited desaturated video of ambiguous streetscapes, to create the terrain of an unsettling dream. Notions of déjà vu are conjured as the viewer engages with the work, exposing the shadowy unease that often arises when one is confronted by the unfamiliar within the recognizable.
Presentation: The video is designed to be an immersive experience. Using projection mapping the fragmented images of Kununurra wrap around three walls of the gallery space encompassing the viewer in the streetscape. The accompanying soundtrack consists of field-recordings, gathered on location using a variety of recording methods.
Sound - Excerpt
Wind Turbine excerpt is taken from a compact disc bearing the same name. The CD comprises stereo recordings of two wind farms in Albany undertaken from various perspectives using different microphone configurations. The recordings were produced during contrasting environmental conditions and times of day to explore the relationship between the turbines and their coastal surroundings. The recordings are unmodified except for some volume balancing and editing