| The Melbourne Art Fair is an expo for commercial galleries. Recently they have invited non-commercial galleries to take part as well. Call Signs #10 was presented by Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces.
Because of the nature of the event and the short installation time, I chose to focus on developing the detail of the objects. The new work introduced birds into the project, which seemed to complement the sound of the Morse code indicators. The original sound for the project was based on frog noises.
Each bird took about a month to complete. They are also now powered by solar panels with a switch on the back for alternating to battery at night or on cloudy days. The solar panels do not include a regulator which means that the sound changes with the quality of the light. In the morning and evening they give off quiet, quick peeps, and stronger, slower tones around mid-day.
Rex Butler included it in his list of ten stand-out works at the Art Fair:
A terrific piece that somehow reminds me of one of Emily Floys' early installations involving lines of text from books, or a children's Scaletrix nailed to the wall. A long cursive line connects the different parts of the work, along which its incidental features are scattered almost like notes on a stave of music. One can imagine this practice being taken much further, into some kind of collapse of the micro and macroscopic that we see with someone like Sarah Tze. Its also amusing to find a work in the Art Fair that already comes with its own red dots!
Australian Art Collector, Jan-March, 2005, p.120.
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