Sherna Teperson

Born 1953, Cape Town, South Africa
Bachelor of Visual Arts
Graduation show: 1996
Graduation ceremony: 1997

Artwork in Space YZ  

Imaginary gardens with real toads, 1996
Electroplated nickel pillow, sound, sensors, mixed media
70 x 120 x 120 cm

Imaginary gardens with real toads (1996) was an immersive installation that channelled a continuous score of low frequency music through a double-walled sound-room. The circular internal space acted as an acoustic theatre for the viewer to contemplate a number of sculptural works inside — and invited the possibilities of performative readings – against the haunting timbre of a sound-piece that resonated along the walls, through the objects, and most importantly, through the body of the spectator.

My own hearing loss had been a strong sensory driver in the research for this final presentation of my studio practice, as I’d discovered that this range of low frequency sound  registered first through the solar plexus of my own body — and then secondly, reached my ears — making me believe that our auditory pathways play a subsidiary role in responding to this particular range of primordial sound/signals.

With the assistance of Jules Gull, the studio technician at UWS Nepean, I had constructed a double-walled reverberating chamber, with the inner wooden wall having the curved form of a Fibonacci spiral. My intention was to present the sculptures I’d made in final year much like a Fluxus score—enabling them performative freedom within the realm of poetics and object-memory.

A circular wooden sound chamber
An oversized trench coat, made of Astroturf, on a metal hanger
A crumpled metal pillow with a subwoofer concealed inside
A small irregular carpet of sponge and toothpicks
A wooden chair
A sound-piece by Colin Offord, playing a range of conch shell trumpets

Imaginary gardens with real toads (2020) presents the original crumpled pillow upended on a raised platform. The memory of the Astroturf trench coat has been embedded in its cast green shadow. The small irregular carpet and the circular space of the original room have merged to become a podium, a reminder of a prior performance.

The original sound piece had been lost. In its place, I’ve used the calls of an Australian owl, the Tawny Frogmouth, because its song falls roughly on an equivalent low frequency sound band. In this presentation, the viewer/performer becomes inadvertently implicated when approaching the work —and unwittingly triggers the haunting calls of an unfamiliar sonic landscape.

With special thanks to Richard Butlin, Cameron Barrie and Kartik Arora for technical assistance with the sound and motion sensors in recreating Imaginary gardens with real toads for Space YZ in 2020.

The experience of Peer Assessment is a stand-out memory for me. I had a strong love/hate relationship with this process of ongoing presentations to your Focus Group (peers). But it was an amazing way of gaining insight into each student’s creative process, and the exchange/dialogue/critique was, with hindsight, one of the most enriching experiences of being at university.

Peer assessment was only used for Interdisciplinary Studies, the studio lecturers running this unit were Joan Grounds and Chris Fortescue.

Learn more about Sherna Teperson by visiting her website.