HULLICK: ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

HUBS: MELBOURNE

"a fitting end to a fine series"

Penny Webb, THE AGE, 2007

"Sometimes I encounter and exhibition that is so overwhelming, covers so much territory and breaks so much new ground that it's difficult to write about it."

Joe Bendik, Chelsea Cinton Press, 2008

CURATORIAL VISION

JOLT Arts Inc. was born in the context of Melbourne's "Artist Run Arts Organisation" landscape. It is central to Hullick's curatorial vision that artists be encouraged to take responsibility for the public presentation of their work, especially when artists are working outside of mainstream or established frameworks. While JOLT initially began as a concert series, Hullick has expanded the scope of JOLT's curatorial practice to encompass any act of arts making whether it be sound, visual art, film, virtual worlds, installation practices and so on. This expanding of JOLT's curatorial range has emerged as a result of Hullick's process of curating events that will teach him, and hopefully JOLT's audiences, about some specific concept or aspect of arts making and/or social and cultural issues. One of the first JOLT concerts was NEBULON and Hullick programmed this concert in such a way, for audiences and artists alike, that something might be discovered about the spatialisation of sound. 

Within this framework of curation for the purpose of insight, Hullick has tended to focus on curating events that might highlight and celebrate the great work being done in Australian arts communities. Hullick also recognises that many artists consider themselves to be outsiders and he seeks to frame his projects in ways where outsiders might be able to find a point of connection with the broader community. Hullick is a great believer that art is fertilised in relation to communities - even if a given artist is an outsider to the community - and that the interface between artist and community is where curation can make a significant contribution to society's cultural development. 

Hullick seeks to present work that encourages cross-disciplinary interaction between artists and audiences, work that pushes beyond boundaries and work that can find interesting ways of drawing traditional techniques and ideas into a contemporary context.

As Artistic Director of JOLT's home city of Melbourne, it is also Hullick's responsibility to oversee the work done by JOLT's international HUBS. JOLT's international HUBS are not due to present events until 2010 and Hullick is greatly looking forward to the challenges that curating within an international framework will bring. 

JAMES HULLICK: BIO

(b. 1973)

Composer, musician, sound artist, installation artist, artistic director

www.jameshullick.com

Born on an Aboriginal reserve at Wallaroo in South Australia, where his parents were social workers, Hullick moved with his mother to Melbourne after a short period in Canberra at the age of three.

Hullick's early artistic practice was focused in music composition. His earliest composing efforts were attempted during his teen years, but very little survives from this period. His compositions at this time were written for the instruments he was eagerly studying - piano, guitar, voice and synthesizers. After walking away from opera studies at the Victorian College of the Arts, Hullick focused his efforts on writing music for theatre, and it was here that he learnt to compose for instruments that he did not play himself. A noted example of Hullick's work at this point in his development was his score for a contemporary g-string clad version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream that was produced by Horned Moon Productions (1995-6). It was a score that mixed junk yard percussion, Indian raga-like motifs, art rock, chorales and contemporary classical idioms with a raw freedom and when it played in Singapore it marked the first of Hullick's international sonic adventures.

Hullick went on to study composition and theatre at La Trobe University, and it was there that technology and electronic sound became an added feature to his sonic palette. Several compositions emerged during these years. Of note are the Hollow Men (1996 - renamed Anonymous Mass at a later date) for choir and Vivisection One (1997-8) for flute, which will receive its first professional performance more than ten years later by Belinda Woods in 2009. It was during these years that Hullick began his long stint as student to the Melbourne based German composer Felix Werder.

In 1998 Hullick travelled to Europe, where he attended the Darmstadt and Stockhausen Verlag courses before spending a month at Luciano Berio's Tempo Reale studios. Hullick travelled on to Toronto, Canada in 1999 where he studied with James Tenney who had been a close colleague to John Cage. With sound artist Jose Sanchez, Hullick created Winds Whipped Wicked Words (1999) for dance (now lost), and began his concert piano career, performing four concerts of his own original music at The Music Gallery. A feature of this work was Hullick's use of prepared piano and extended piano techniques -  techniques of which his teacher, James Tenney, had been an expert. 

Hullick returned to Australia in 2000. Only a handful of works were written during the following two years as Hullick became carer to his ailing mother in a small town outside Moe, Victoria. Works of note from this time include the plunderphonic digital signal processing piece TAJ (2000) performed in Toronto,  Felix (2000), a duo for trombones, published by Red House Editions and performed by the Manhattan Brass, Hullick's Untitled Quartet (2001) for string quartet and a chamber work titled Action 1, 2, 3, 4 (2001) that was written for the Australian National Academy of Music. In 2000 Hullick also performed Shelf Life, a 24 hour solo improvisation on piano in a shop front in Footscray.  

Shortly after the death of his mother in 2002, Hullick began his MA in composition at Melbourne University's Conservatorium. Perhaps triggered by his mother's death, Hullick's work from this time onwards often takes on social issues confronting the Australian and international communities. In the same year Hullick received the Composition Scholarship and was commissioned by Julian Burnside QC to write a string quartet in honour of Hullick's teacher Felix Werder. Hullick presented the Dunera (2002) quartet at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne in the same year. Historically, the  Dunera was a boat - a hellship - that during the Second World War brought German Jews out to Australia and detained them in camps until the end of the war. Werder and his father were on that ship and the scars of the event remain with Werder to this very day. It was partly through organising this event that Hullick confirmed his capacity for quality artistic direction. In hindsight, the ultimate establishment of JOLT Arts Inc. in 2008 seems a logical end from a sequence of events initiated at this time.

2004 saw a marked shift in Hullick's arts practice, with the composer breaking out into visual art and gallery based installation projects. Most noted outcomes of this new development in Hullick's arts practice were One Cute Mother - a sonic and visual installation at Conical Gallery in Melbourne - and + Reduction at Kings ARI, also in Melbourne, where Hullick teamed up with visual artist Robert Mangion. + Reduction marked Hullick's first presentation of his sculptural work with the audio speaker's physical form.

Hullick completed his MA in early 2005 and many of the works he created during this time remain publicly un-performed, though studio recordings of works such as Unravel (2004) for  piano trio and Pyramids Drift Like Clouds (2004) for chamber ensemble have enjoyed repeated radio air play. Recording these works was the first action of Hullick's newly formed BOLT Ensemble, who have since become a key cog in the JOLT Arts Inc. project planning. A work of particular note from this time was Hullick's mouthscram (2004) written for the Cologne-based baritone singer Peter Ziethen. The work continues to be extremely well received, being described by one German reviewer as, "a psychogram that shocks as well as electrifies the listener." The text of the work (also written by Hullick) addresses the issues related to sea bound asylum seekers and their dreams of Australian residency.

In 2005, Hullick began his PhD studies at RMIT University, where he received an APA Scholarship, and the new-found artistic and financial support through RMIT enabled Hullick to take on more ambitious projects. He presented The Whiteness (2005) for chamber ensemble, electronics and voices at the 2005 Liquid Architecture Festival. The work was Hullick's first real-time score, which is a score that is read from a computer screen as opposed to from a sheet of paper. Such scores are often generated through computer programming in real-time and often contain elements of interactivity. Another work of note from this period was Woman Swaying of a Lost Mans (2005) for piano trio. The work explores the recursive implications of an iterated chord and has been regularly played on radio. Later in 2005, Hullick traveled to California to further his study intensively with composer James Tenney. The research trip was funded by Julian Burnside and informed the composition of many later compositions and curatorial decisions. 

In 2005, Hullick began work as Sonic Arts Tutor for the Footscray Community Arts Centre's Artlife Program - an arts-based day program for adults with intellectual disability. Later in 2006 Artlife and Hullick started up the Amplified Elephants, a sonic art ensemble featuring artists with intellectual disabilities that has continued to deliver professional outcomes in the years since 2006, and has become a regular fixture with JOLT Arts Inc.. In particular, the Amplified Elephants have provided Hullick with a way of closely considering the plight of the 'outsider' in contemporary Australian culture.

2006 was a critical year in Hullick's creative output and marks a period where his work took on a new found intensity. His abattoir-like gallery installation Is there a spirit in those bones? (2006) shown at Westspace Gallery was his first robotic sonic and visual exhibition. Hullick continued working on real-time scores through 2006 with Coercion for percussion and electronics and K(l)ing for percussion and electronics. Both works were performed by the Swiss Australian Collectables, an art music outfit of which Hullick is a member. Hullick also joined the board for KINGS Artist Run Initiative at this time. 

The various works undertaken by Hullick over the 2005/2006 period provided the momentum that led Hullick to establish the JOLT Concert Series in 2007. Four concerts took place in this series, with each concert focusing in on a dynamic element of contemporary sonic arts practice; Cranky Robotics focused on ability/disability in sound art and utilized Hullick's robotic instruments specially made for the event; Roboticon focused in on music machines; Nebulon on multi-speaker sound; Interactacon on computer interactivity in sonic art making. The series was a success and featured premiers of several of Hullick's works including; Death is a Standing Wave (2007) for speaker sculptures; Things Fall Apart (2007) for speaker machines; Swallowing Machine (2007) for the BOLT Ensemble with electronics; Sk-eye Like Mind (2007) for the BOLT Ensemble and interactive real-time score, Interactacon (2007) for the Amplified Elephants and interactive real-time score. Other JOLT events from this time include Shimmersong (2007) for the BOLT Ensemble, the Amplified Elephants and projections, and the Swiss Australian Collectables Swiss Tour (2007) where Hullick premiered his amplified percussion work The Stealing People (2007) and The Men Who Cried Wolf (2007) for sirens. Hullick also spent time in Cologne beginning the process of recording his radio chamber opera Bruchlandung (2007-9) with opera singer Peter Ziethen and the Ziethen Ensemble. The 2007 JOLT concerts supported a variety of sonic artists working in a variety of sonic mediums.

Hullick presented several new gallery-based installations during 2007, including; I'm My Own Grandpa (2007) - a recursive vibrating speaker sculpture; The Amazing Madame Bah Sheepgoze (2007) - another speaker sculpture; and You Make Me Feel So Young (2007) - an installation involving dummies, speakers and gas masks. 

Hullick's intense output continued into early 2008 when, in collaboration with text artist berni.m.janssen, the Janssen/Hullick Duo presented Emotionography, an hour long show of works for piano and spoken word that explored the emotional terrains of Australian issues and human relationships. Hullick shortly followed this concert up with an installation of robotic violins in the Incinerator Complex's Quiet Music Festival.

Soon after these events in 2008, Hullick founded JOLT Arts Inc. as a not-for-profit sonic and visual arts organisation. JOLT presented several events in 2008, with Hullick at the helm as artistic director, including; Sono Perception, a sonic art concert featuring several artists at CarriageWorks and the National Film and Sound Archive; Dark Luminance in New York, two group exhibitions in New York; Sonic Body, a group exhibition at Westspace Gallery; and Wigga, an exhibition event that featured Hullick's installations and involved concerts presenting various Melbourne sound artists at Shifted Gallery. Hullick premiered many new works during this time including; Song of the Gotholin (2008) for robotic violins; and Leyz Gerlz (2008) and Incubator (2008) for multimedia audio visual wig installations.

CONTACT

James Hullick 

Artistic Director

t: +61 431 678 164

e: click here to email