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Luminous images and music meet in Torontonians Alison Melville and Kate Hawkins

By John Terauds on March 8, 2012

Tyger, Tyger is representative of the oil-on-mylar work by Kate Hawkins in an art-and-music collaboration with recorder player Alison Melville at Heliconian Hall

It’s safe to say that more people go to Yorkville’s Heliconian Hall to hear great music than to see great visual art. But both artforms are appearing on an equal footing starting Saturday, as recorder master Alison Melville teams up with visual artist Kate Hawkins for a feast of sights and sounds.

The show, titled The Business of Angels (the same as Melville’s latest recording project), opens on Saturday at 1 p.m. and runs to March 28. Hawkins’ art will be on display around the hall. Melville is scheduled to perform live between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturday (with short breaks) and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on March 22.

The rest of the time, the show will function as an installation with music recorded by Melville.

Alison Melville (Tara McMullen photo)

I asked Melville to provide a bit of background for the show:

The presentation for this show of Kate Hawkins’s work is somewhat experimental in nature. Kate does a lot of her work on mylar, painting on both sides of the surface, and the pieces are meant to be hung with a light source behind them.

Kate’s having some light boxes built for the show, and from what I can gather, some pieces will be installed around these light boxes on the floor, and others will be hung on the walls.

The music combines acoustic and electronic means, and each of the pieces has been chosen/designed to combine with specific pieces of artwork in the show.

Some of the music is taken from the Bird Project’s Something in the Air CD, including a couple of pieces Ben Grossman and I put together, and there are few new things prepared specifically for this show.

The newest things are small experiments of mine that combine fragments of poetry in various languages (Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian and English) with pre-recorded and live instrumental music.

At the openings, I’ll move around the room and play each piece of music next to the artwork for which it’s been chosen or created.

Whoever else is there will also be free to move around at any time, whenever and wherever they wish, so it’s not a ‘fixed audience placement’ type of show, if you know what I mean. The music’s not meant as background music, nor is it intended as a typical concert.

A nice extra feature of this show is that Hawkins’ oil-on-mylar works are neither overly large (the pieces are typically less than 24 x 36 inches) nor pricey (the most expensive work on her website is listed at $850). Check out the details here.

For more information on Melville and the Bird Project, click here.

Heliconian Hall is located at 35 Hazelton Ave, a short stroll from the Bay subway stop. To find out when the building is open for a visit, call 416-922-3618.

Here’s a track from The Business Angels CD, with Melville on recorder:

John Terauds

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