+ reduction is the first collaboration between visual artist Robert Mangion and composer James Hullick, both of whom are Melbourne-based practitioners. + reduction investigates the relationship between sound, image, text and architectural space, using simplicity to amplify emotion. "When you perceive nothing, you must actually be perceiving something." - Hullick. "This show explores reductionism on a magnified scale in both sonic and visual terms." - Mangion. + reduction is partly a continuation of Mangion's work in Intertextual Bodies for The Melbourne International Festival which challenged the way people are perceived in public spaces and the conditioning we are all subject to. + reduction focuses on the function of perception through colour-field painting and text-based practices that intersect with spatialisation and sound design.
Unlike traditional minimalist projects, the emotional content of the work is drawn into the foreground.
" - all the time believing in the existence of a world that can fold away." - Mangion
Hullick's emergence as an enigmatic creative voice is given free rein, allowing him to expand upon the concepts he recently presented to German audiences in mouthscram, a work for solo baritone which explored the idea of emotionalism in minimalism. In + reduction Hullick has created an engrossing continuous fabric of sound derived from a pre-recorded violin and cello. Each instrument produces a limited number of sonic events and these are multiplied on a grand scale - being distributed randomly through 13 speakers within the space.
"In perception it is impossible to escape the emotional landscape of the perceiver." - Hullick
+ reduction opens up many aspects of contemporary artistic practice and sonic proposition for debate and discussion and this is the great strength of this show.
We live in age of ever increasing emotion + reduction.
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