Profoundly inspired by music and rhythm, Lucreccia Quintanilla works across disciplines as an artist, writer and DJ. Currently undertaking her PhD at Monash University and mixing beats as DJ General Feelings, Quintanilla has spent years researching the physics of sound as well as assembling speaker stacks in the Jamaican style –stacked high and en masse.
Looking at how sound and music can influence art making and storytelling, in A Ripple and an Echo, Quintanilla highlights the sounds of nature within the urban environment of Melbourne. Influenced by dancehall, reggaeton and dembow, Quintanilla has layered outdoor recordings of “all the incidental sounds we take for granted,” with “dance music and ambient sounds,” to create an auditory narrative about how we indirectly connect to place.
“The work in A Ripple and an Echo looks at sound as a form of knowledge transference and engages with the world around us outside of a purely visual representation,” she explains. “I am interested in the narratives that visual language fails to articulate.”
While sound is the exhibition’s core medium, it also incorporates sculpture, video and paintings by Quintanilla. These three-dimensional pieces offer a wider context for the soundscapes and also act as additional sources for amplification.
Similar to previous works like We shall dance by the light of the moon, 2017, where Quintanilla used the molten ripples of ceramic forms to amplify sounds played from a mobile phone, when exhibited together, each piece in A Ripple and an Echo adds to a deeper narrative underpinning the small details of everyday life. “I hope to engage the listener in a way that makes them think of how we exist culturally with each other and the environment around us.”
A Ripple and an Echo
Lucreccia Quintanilla
Linden New Art
29 June—1 September
This article was originally published in the July/August 2019 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
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