BOWER
A collective bower commission, 2021
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Bower
2021
Collages created for Genevieve Lacey’s Bower
A small look at a commission: the artwork for Genevieve Lacey’s Bower. This project has been a sheer delight.
Bower was released as an album by ABC Classic on the 14th of May, and toured nationally for Musica Viva from the 10th to 26th of July, 2021.
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Last year, I assembled a group of artists to work on a project inspired by bowerbirds’ obsessive collecting habits, and their ability to build magical architecture out of fragments. Through a close-to-home, quietly attentive year, we each created our own strands and fashioned them into a collective bower, made of music, art, words, film and light.
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Bower is an associative, ephemeral nest, woven with memories, heart, hope. Musical treasures found, borrowed and made are lovingly fashioned into a sanctuary.
Genevieve Lacey
The incomparable Genevieve Lacey — performer, composer and creator of poetic, sensual worlds — joins with internationally acclaimed Australian harpist Marshall McGuire to explore the unique power of music to offer comfort and renewal.
‘Music’s my element, something I need, like air and light. But for most of 2020, musicians couldn’t make live music with or for other people. What to do, when the world tilts so sharply that it’s hard to stand? ‘During this time of isolation, people the world round are yearning for shelter, both physical and spiritual. So I assembled a cast of people whose work I love, some of whom I’d never met: a harpist and a recording engineer, eight living composers, eight dead ones, two visual artists, a writer, filmmaker, lighting designer and producer. And together, we set out to create a sense of shelter: a nest, woven with memories, heart, hope.
My mind went to bowerbirds and their obsessive collecting habits. And also, their ability to build magical architecture out of fragments — structures that entwine art and survival. Slowly, gently, through a close-to-home, quietly attentive year, we each created our own versions of sanctuary. And then sifted, sorted and fashioned them into a bower.’
The exquisite album artwork, created by Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison, reflects the beauty and richness of the musical soundscapes presented on this album: sublime new music by Lou Bennett, Andrea Keller, Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, John Rodgers, Lachlan Skipworth, Bree van Reyk and Erkki Veltheim, side by side with musical treasures reaching back across six centuries.
ABC Classic
Louise volunteered to be a participant in Soliloquy. We had some lovely chats and a beautiful time sharing a stage. I clicked on her email footer afterwards to discover her stunning world of art making. She and Gracia have created sumptuous artwork and design for Bower, and I have loved every minute of working with them.
— Genevieve Lacey
Lacey and McGuire invite you to a magical musical bower
Will Yeoman
Friday 30th of July, 2021
Limelight
In her beautiful booklet essay which, along with the music and illustrations makes one long for the more widespread return of LPs, if not illuminated manuscripts, Jennifer Ackerman reminds us that “…bowerbirds fill their bowers with objects of delight… for one bold purpose: to lure a female. The bower is no nest but a theatre oseduction…”.
Not art for art’s sake, then. But all art aims to seduce, in one way or another. And so, it is with Bower, Genevieve Lacey’s response to a timely commission. And to a need to collaborate with others to create a sense of shelter. To follow the bowerbird’s example and “build magical architecture out of fragments — structures that entwine art and survival”.
With Ackerman’s words and Gracia Haby’s and Louise Jennison’s richly yet delicately spun illustrations setting the stage, Lacey’s recorder and McGuire’s harp swoop and flit among their animating spirits’ eclectic musical hoard, holding up for our admiration first one then another musical gem: some ancient, some newly wrought.
The metallic sheen of contemporary works by Erkki Veltheim and Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, with their use of multi-tracking and electronics, contrasts with the old-world patina of music by Playford, van Eyck, Purcell, Froberger, Biber and de Rore. Other (living) composers — Lou Bennett, Andrea Keller, Lachlan Skipworth, John Rodgers and Bree van Reyk — inhabit a poised Janus-space of ruin and rejuvenation.
Lacey and McGuire are masters of all they survey. The result is a horizonless haven filled with “objects of delight”. A boundless bower and the perfect antidote to cabin fever.
Review on Limelight
Genevieve Lacey — recorders
Marshall McGuire — harps
Martel Ollerenshaw — producer
Jim Atkin — sound engineer
Lou Bennett, Andrea Keller, Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, John Rodgers, Lachlan Skipworth, Bree van Reyk, Erkki Veltheim — composers
Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison — art
Jennifer Ackerman — words
Angus Kemp — film
Niklas Pajanti — light
