ADRIAN JONES: MELBALOOPIAE
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Main gallery

Catalogue text by Marie Sierra

The title of Adrian Jones’ exhibition, Melbaloopiae, sought to circumscribe the artist’s interest in spatiality as constructed within the realm of the personal and biographical. Its reference to soprano Dame Nellie Melba, and the city from which she adopted her name, informed the visual, aural and discursive register of the work. As cultural export and diva, Melba constructed her own landscape of sound and symbols heard in resonance, Jones constructed a space of rhythmic repetition, reflected surface and highly symbolic form. Water spinning in large concrete discs cast a rotating reflection onto the walls, while harmonics quivered from crystal glasses, and curious organic forms fashioned after vocal chords were framed as decorous cultural artefacts.