Agony in Lines – Collaboration with Sunny Kim
Sculptural installation for ‘Agony in Lines’ exhibition in collaboration with musician Sunny Kim as part of Sunny Kim’s Grainger Museum residency, 2023.
Performed on May 11, 2023, at Grainger Museum by Composer and Vocalist Sunny Kim and by Choreographer and Dancer Janette Hoe. Presented at NGV Design Week, 2023.
Katie Stackhouse, Reveal, Loop, Traverse Installation view, 2023
Fabric, seagrass, repurposed polymer, cane, ink, wood, mixed threads, stone, scorched wood, grass mat, Hanji paper, ink, silk. Dimensions variable.
Performed on May 11, 2023, at Grainger Museum by Composer and Vocalist Sunny Kim and by Choreographer and Dancer Janette Hoe, accompanied by VCA music students performing vocal composition by Sunny Kim, Presented at NGV Design Week, 2023.
‘Stackhouse’s installation externalises imagery conjured by listening to verbal recollections shared with Katie by composer Sunny Kim. The entwined form comprises circular loops hanging in space, integrating charcoaled scorched wood that has undergone intense, transformative processes through heat and fire. Through conversation, Kim shared memories of familial traumatic events that impacted her as a child in Korea. Added to this are memories of a broader intergenerational cultural trauma, the result of occupation and subsequent colonising forces. In the way that trauma somatically circles and loops through the nervous system of the body and neurological pathways of the brain, the installation Reveal, loop, traverse by Stackhouse gives spatial form to Kim’s recollections. Through singing and ritualised performance, Kim integrates the lived experience to sculpt a new internal neurological-scape to forge and transform.’
Link: Video about the exhibition and project Agony In Lines
Throughout the Agony of Lines exhibition, Sunny Kim has responded to the lineal parallels between themes of Percy Grainger’s life and her own, through contemporary ceremonial and vocal performances. Katie Stackhouse has considered these connections in the objects held within the museum and the making of the sculptural installation.
Healing Sticks have been created in homage to Sunny Kim’s great-grandmother, a shaman during her life in the tradition of the ancient Korean Sundo culture, practices that continue through the performances and compositions within the exhibition. Kim activated the sculptures Healing Sticks in her performances at Grainger Museum during the Agony of Lines exhibition.
“Katie Stackhouse was a creative collaborator as part of a recent project at the Grainger Museum (University of Melbourne), with artist-in-residence vocalist Sunny Kim. The exhibition and performance outcome, ‘Agony in Lines’, was a site-specific and multidisciplinary installation that reimagined the Grainger Museum as a sanctuary for reconnection. Katie’s sculptural work in response to Sunny Kim’s recorded soundtrack, created an immersive experience through texture, movement, shape and shadow that successfully allowed audiences to connect and unpack the relationship between trauma, memory, and identity. Katie was also a lead in our student engagement program as part of this residency, mentoring VCA students to produce sculptural pieces for the exhibition and introducing them to artistic techniques and installation methods. Katie was exceptional to work with throughout the residency process, responded very thoughtfully to Sunny Kim’s creative direction and brought expert knowledge to the project that produced a highly successful creative experience that transformed the museum for our audiences.”
Nicky Pastore, Exhibitions Coordinator Museums & Collections and Strategy and Culture, Buxton Contemporary, Grainger Museum, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Old Quad, Science Gallery Melbourne and STEM Centre of Excellence.
“In guiding the production of this work Sunny Kim referenced her own great-grandmother, Chilsoon Moon, an exponent of Seondo and a shaman whose presence persists through living memory. One is thus presented with two contrasting ontologies; fatalist-psychoanalytic on the one hand, optimistic and cathartic on the other. Moreover, in the looping abstraction of Katie Stackhouse’s suspended sculpture and installation, the possibility of untangling the trauma of life is dangled before the viewer, actions moreover that can be traced from one generation to the next. “
Excerpt from exhibition essay, Damian Smith, AICA Australia
All photos: Sung Hyun Sohn
Exhibited and performed on Wurundjeri Country – We acknowledge and pay respect to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and Emerging of the site where these artworks were made, present and performed.
