National Gallery of Victoria presents Celeste Boursier-Mougenot: clinamen a new installation by French artist and composer Céleste Boursier-Mougenot featuring a celestial blue pool of water and unorthodox musical instruments on display from 3 May 2013 to 8 September 2013.
In Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s clinamen 2013, white porcelain bowls float on the surface of an expansive, intensely blue pool. The floating crockery, swept along by submarine currents, circulates gently, colliding as percussive instruments. This constantly changing and chiming acoustic soundscape, illustrated by shifting patterns, shadows and chance compositions will resonate through the space.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot is a French artist and composer who creates large-scale acoustic installations which draw upon laws of nature and rhythms of everyday life to produce new forms of art and music. Encompassing sculptural, performative and avant-garde music traditions, and the use of unorthodox musical instruments, Boursier-Mougenot’s installations promote chance and indeterminacy in musical composition, albeit within highly controlled environments.
A past Marcel Duchamp Prize finalist, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s work has been presented in major exhibitions by leading museums and galleries internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Barbican Centre, London and PS1, New York, and group exhibitions including Art & Music: Search for New Synesthesia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2012; French Art Today, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2011; 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2010; and the 3rd Moscow Biennale, Moscow, 2009. www.ngv.vic.gov.au