Gesture Ponders Music - Beth Dawson

By
Beth Dawson
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A splatter of paint, with dribbles and drips, three words in a diiferent colour each. From top to bottom orange, pink, then green, reads "Gesture Ponders Music"

Through melting frujus of colour and the stilled repetition of a preset lady-hand, I revisit moments of an afternoon spent music making.

These drawings are rhizomatic, opening to comics for friends to read, musical scores, a schematic for laying my noise table, mapping, and documentation. I am interested in the role of thoughtful, contemplative, non-productivity-driven gestures in art-making. Looking to the art labour of myself and my community, I see how in the sustaining abundant practices of listening and drawing we emphasise joyous fragments of time. The accompanying track 'Krd Shangri Las' invites you to an afternoon in my Karangahape Rd apartment.

A splatter of paint, with dribbles and drips, three words in a diiferent colour each. From top to bottom orange, pink, then green, reads "Gesture Ponders Music"
A pair of hands, and the text INPUT OUPUT. Going out and staying in.
waves of pink and orange. Tingling hands. A speech bubble "yes, lets..." Another bubble "begin"
Four hands vibrating in yellow, or is it one hand descending in fragmented moments?
a sign "in the garden, at the table" The hints of square edges. The orange and pinky purple hand shimmers as it simmers to touch someting with its pointing finger. The words "being at the table" emerge
the hand triples and moves through yellow and pink waves. text "3 piece" with an astersisk. The three words that correspond with the astersik are "past, present, future" Speech bubble "Being too much?"
an orange amplifier. The hand is now existing in getsures of green and blue. Speech bubble "put a fuzz box on it". a fuzzbox at the bottom of the page labelled "In/out"
The green and blue now dominate. The hand is descending, pointing, it is blurred with liquid. There is a thought bubble "It is spilling over" and a speech bubble "Change the record!"
two hands, free in white space. One palm up,one palm down. They are relaxed in pink.
The orange amplifier pulses with loudness. The hand reaches out in strong black, it has mass. Speech bubble "Hey! Stop! Stop!"
two hands, free in white space. One palm up,one palm down. They are relaxed in pink. They are in a slightly different state to the ones described above. The same hands in a different moment.
The hands are bold in blue and pink. There six of them filling the page. Two palm down, two palm up, and two entwined together. Speech bubble "Presence?". Throught Bubble "I feel closer now than when I was before you"
splatters and lines of colour. A vibrant and fizzing page. The words in free flowing brush "Over an afternoon drawing, listening, sharing. XOX Ducklingmonster"
Beth Dawson
Beth is holding a red flowing skirt. She has a top covered in glitter, and sunglasses that are covered in jewels making future insect eyes. She is atop a tussock covered sand dune.

Beth Dawson aka Ducklingmonster is an audio-visual artist from Onehunga,  Auckland | Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand | Aotearoa. She investigates out-of-bounds areas through a range of practices with a focus on community empowerment. Publicly her work has predominantly been in experimental sound performance, most notably in the group The Futurians, and solo as Ducklingmonster. Blatantly and happily ignoring the restrictions of media she works in sound, ink, video, broken electronics, and whatever else takes her fancy. She is a founding member of Tāmaki Makaurau based art collective Uniform. In 2022 she completed a Masters Of Visual Art at AUT receiving the Head of School award for her practice-based research into elevating and valuing that which is temporary, collective, amateur, and improvised.

 

Website: https://ducklingmonster.com/
Bandcamp: https://ducklingmonster.bandcamp.com/

image credit: Hayley Theyers