A celebration of the ideas and innovations
of the pianist and composer Percy
Grainger, and the architects Walter Burley
Griffin and Marion Mahony, quite literally
and physically, could only be contemplated
at the University of Melbourne.
Welcome to Cultural Collisions,
a new collaboration between the
University of Melbourne and the
Melbourne Festival.
Cultural Collisions offers an
exciting series of performances,
exhibitions installations and
lectures, which make use of the
unique collections and creativity
of the University of Melbourne.
Curated and devised by
Jonathan Mills
Cultural Collisions proposes connections
between music and mathematics, poetry
and place, spirituality and space, as
mediated through the ideas and mayhem
of three modernist mavericks. In their
various ways Percy Grainger, Walter Burley
Griffin and Marion Mahony challenged
many of the orthodox preconceptions of
their times.
Questioning the most basic elements of
Western music such as scales and rhythmic
patterns; or the shape and locations of
public and private buildings and dwellings
within a modern metropolis, Grainger,
Griffin and Mahony each proposed a
bold alternative vision of the world, at a
significant time in the history of Australia.
To honour the unorthodox legacies and
idiosyncratic visions of Percy Grainger,
Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony,
and to locate their ideas at the epicentre
of a contemporary Australian university
and arts festival, Cultural Collisions offers
distinctive creative collaborations between
the past and the future, with students
and academics from the University of
Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts, Faculty of
Victorian College of the Arts and Melbourne
Conservatorium of Music, Melbourne
School of Design, Melbourne School
of Engineering, the Microsoft Centre
for SocialNUI and the Transformative
Technologies Research Unit, as well as
the Australian National Academy of Music
– including 17 percussionists, 16 electric
and acoustic guitarists, six singers, seven
pianists, 40 wind players, 16 architects,
2 dancers, 8 sculptors, 2 engineers, 37
leading thinkers – proposing and presenting
work alongside trombonist Ben Anderson,
soprano Justine Anderson, instrument
designers Rodney Berry and Michael Candy,
filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson, projection
artist Ian de Gruchy, architect Philip Goad,
composer and musicologist Rosalind
Hall, new media artist Sarah Kenderdine,
composer Jonathan Mills, percussionist
Peter Neville, conductor Fabian Russell,
new media artist Jeffery Shaw, dancers
and choreographers Delia Silvan and Leigh
Warren, sculptor Laura Woodward, pianist
Timothy Young, interface design gurus
Travis Cox and Frank Vetere, and curators
Brian Allison, Samantha Comte, Jacqueline
Doughty, Jonathon Drews, Astrid
Krautschneider, Clare Williamson, at Arts
West, the Dulux Gallery, MSD, Grainger
Museum, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melba
Hall, Newman College, Old Quadrangle
within the University of Melbourne.
I am grateful to Rose Hiscock and
Professors Ian Anderson, Kate DarianSmith, Jane Davidson, Alison Inglis
and Andrew May for their support of
The Future of the Object, an important
symposium to be held as a part of Cultural
Collisions, and marking the opening of
the latest addition to the University of
Melbourne’s Parkville campus – the stateof-the-art Arts West building.
I would like to acknowledge contributions
from Deakin University’s Motion.Lab and
the University of NSW’s DomeLab for their
support of Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey
Shaw’s Inside the Ethereal Eye.
I would like to thank Vice-Chancellor
Professor Glyn Davis, Vice-Principal
(Engagement) Adrian Collette and Naomi
Adams, Maureen Gardner, Dr Meredith
Martin and Michelle Moo for their support
and encouragement of Cultural Collisions,
as well as the team from External
Relations, University Services.
Great artists and designers such as
Percy Grainger, Walter Burley Griffin and
Marion Mahony each demonstrate a rare
ability to absorb the circumstances of
their surroundings, the prevailing shifts
and shapes of our world, in weird and
wonderful ways. Whereas the philosopher
or politician might detect danger, or urge
caution, the artiste intuits excitement and
opportunity.
Theirs is an inspiring contrast and essential
provocation to habit, comfort, orthodoxy
and progress, which, together with the
analytical methods of the scientist and
engineer, enable institutions such as the
University of Melbourne the chance to offer
hope and ambition to us all.
Jonathan Mills, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow
University of Melbourne