Velodrome (2022-23)
Installation views at Stockroom Kyneton (2023) Photos: Matthew Stanton; Installation views at Schoolhouse Gallery, Coburg (2022) Photos: Edwina Stevens. Mixed media sculptural and audiovisual installation in collaboration with Edwina Stevens: Concrete, basalt, ceramic, steel, pine, Tasmanian oak, particle board, MDF, cotton, adhesives, acrylic paint, screens, speakers, transducers, speaker cable and self-composing, multi-channel soundscape. Dimensions variable.
'Velodrome' is a collaborative, site-specific sculptural and audiovisual installation by Carly Fischer and Edwina Stevens that responds to the Coburg Velodrome as a point of departure for investigating some of the intersecting details and histories of Coburg, Melbourne. Oscillating around Coburg's industrial fringes, the installation reflects on how these in-between spaces and their accumulations of forgotten fragments, traces and tones reveal hidden histories and generate improvisational dialogues with local places. In the installation, sculptural, video and sonic fragments collected from these places are reassembled and reconstructed into a constantly shifting conversation throughout the duration of the exhibition. Through its intersecting loops, layers and accumulations, 'Velodrome' considers the importance of creating more generative engagements with our local places through their peripheral spaces.
Originally exhibited at Schoolhouse Gallery, Coburg in 2022, 'Velodrome' was re-contextualised to Stockroom Kyneton in 2023. Extending into the peripheries of Kyneton from Coburg, the installation drew on specific relationships between the 2 places, overlapping sculptural and audiovisual fragments from Kyneton with those from Coburg. Through its re-contextualisation, the installation also specifically reflected on how the hyper-local can be translated and generate dialogues with other places.
‘Velodrome’ was also included as a soundscape for radio in Radiophrenia 2023, Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow. Drawing on field recordings that wander around factories, former quarries and scrap yards, as well as synthesised drones played through discarded infrastructure, the soundscape has been composed through a randomised playback process, generating incidental overlaps and trajectories that open up alternate dialogues with the place.