ARTS HOUSE IS OUR HOUSE

Robin Fox

A couple of years ago my father handed me a box. Inside that box was a bunch of photographs and ephemeral documents relating to my great grandfather Reverend Julian Blanchard. As I leafed through the photos which were nested amongst early plans for the suburb of North Melbourne and notes from the abstinence sermons that he would deliver from local pulpits, I came across a framed photograph that kind of blew my mind. It was my great grandfather leaning over the water fountain outside what is now Arts House. The photo was taken exactly 1 month and 1 day before my birth in 1973 and, in the background, is the window to my current studio. So it seems that my family has been haunting the Streets around Arts House for generations now.

The revelation felt fitting to me as, over the decades, from being the venue of my first major performance work Narcissus & Echo (written in collaboration with my then partner Elizabeth Parsons) in 1999 to the current location of my happy place, my studio sanctuary, Arts House has been emblematic of a kind of family and definitely a kind of home.

I have been thinking about what it is that Arts House does that makes it so special, and I have no doubt that there are as many answers to that question as there have been artists who have walked through its doors – so what is it for me? Arts House has been, for me, a beacon of risk. Nothing is as important in the early life of an aspiring artist than that moment when someone identifies something in you, places their trust in you and puts resources behind you to realise a work. A platform that encourages this kind of risk is the ONLY way that a fire can be lit that will impel an artist forward. Arts House with the input of Andrew Byrne and Chamber Made Opera (as it was then known) lit that fire for me.

I was an honours student in composition at LaTrobe University in 1999 – the year of that music department’s unfortunate closure. It was a terrible time for the department and I remember distinctly a feeling of despair as I witnessed in real time all that I had loved about the study of music and composition descend into the murky depths of the newly minted neo-liberalised  ‘creative industries.’ It was in this context that the composer and programmer Andrew Byrne tapped me on the shoulder and told me he was looking for new work to program with Chamber Made Opera. I had read about the company (at that time still under the directorship of founder Douglas Horton) in the great book ARIA’s compiled by Rainer Linz so I knew that the company was dedicated to experimental music that existed at the intersection of music and performance art. A kind of neo-operatic form. I submitted a sketch for the Narcissus & Echo work based on a conceptual design by Elizabeth Parsons with my score. It was a bizarre and wonderful piece featuring four double basses and 4 opera singers (including the now legendary Antoinette Halloran) poised behind turntables – slowly rotating classical records. At one point a singer had a mouthpiece with a long tape loop from it to a reel to reel tape machine on its side – the taped voice being an electrical echo of the human voice. The work was on a triple bill with the performance poet Anja Walwicz and a work by Slave Pianos.

 I will never forget the experience of bringing that work to life at Arts House. All of the hard work and attention to detail. It felt like a trial by fire and I thoroughly enjoyed getting burnt. Clive O’Connell reviewed the evening in The Age describing Narcissus & Echo as ‘a truly contemporary sounding work.’ I don’t think he liked it necessarily but it was all the approbation I needed to feel that a path had been forged. Since that fateful triple bill I have composed music for multiple dance works which have had their world premieres in the Arts House hall. I have filled the space with my laser and sound works and, during the pandemic, was granted access to the supper room where I created the appropriately stir crazily titled Hyperbolic Psychedelic Mind-Melting Tunnel of Light.

 Since around 2015 – so for a decade now – I have had the great privilege of calling the Post Office Studios at Arts House my creative refuge. My studio, tucked upstairs above the post office has been so instrumental in everything that I have created over that period. I have felt nurtured and supported by multiple ADs, production teams and FOH staff all of whom contribute to a wonderful culture across the board. The Post Office Studios are a real gift to the creative community in Melbourne / Naarm and I am deeply honoured to have been a beneficiary of that gift for so long. It really has made my career and life here in Australia possible.

 So, since my first encounter as an artist in 1999, Arts House has been a cornerstone of contemporary performance risk taking in my life. These days I’m not such a risk and am blessed with opportunities and choices. But that could never have been the case without a place like Arts House providing a platform and giving an emerging artist the bandwidth to create freely. May this vital resource remain true to its mission and present relevant and vital new work well into the future. Without risk we are nothing. We stop.

Image Credit : Supplied by the artist
Image Description: The Main Hall at Arts House featuring lasers covering the space in pink, purple and blue tones.