Relations and Un-Relations

RESEARCH BACKGROUND Graeve works across painting and sound disciplines to investigate the experience of the interaction between painting and music. The media do not interact to form a seamless whole and he explores methods of extending the frameworks for their creation and reading. He questions what happens when these media overlap and interrogates the irreconcilable relationship between visual and acoustical phenomena. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION This installation challenges the viewer visually and aurally with its fusion of colour and sound. It creates a distorted spatial awareness that extends beyond a simple synesthetic blending of sensory experience. Collapsing meaningful distinctions and investigating 'relations and un-relations, Graeve' engages the audience in a multimodal sensory experience and broadens our understanding of the role sound plays in art. It also problematized the illustrative nature of painting and music relationships inherent in much visual music. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE Graeve was one of three contemporary artists selected for this exhibition, a prestigious survey of historical Australian work in abstract painting and music. A catalogue accompanied the exhibition and Graeve is included in the curatorial essays as a pioneer of abstraction alongside artists Yvonne Audette, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Roger Kemp, Donald Laycock and Roy de Maistre.