IT took more than a decade for Yarraville artist Dora Levakis to get to the source of a sound that moved her.
After first catching an insight on a TV program about throat singers from Tuva, a small republic in southern Siberia, Levakis was intrigued.
“I was trying to work out where this sound was coming from … I had to get to Tuva,” she says.
Levakis travelled to Tuva in 2010, where she interviewed and recorded the throat singers and even tried learning their language.
“You can get good samples on the people singing on the internet, but I wanted to walk on the land where these sprang from, find out how the different characteristics of the land [are] captured in their singing. That singing moves me and makes me want to cry.”
Despite being half a world away, she has brought together two indigenous, animist cultures – the Tuvans, and indigenous artists from Numbulwar in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory – for her exhibition entitled Of Remote Place.
“I wanted to focus on people who create work about where they are; a sense of place and how they are spiritually connected to the land. It seemed perfect to put them [the Tuvans and Aborigines] together.”
As well as her own paintings, including a portrait of indigenous author Gerald Murnane, and a multimedia presentation, three artists from Numbulwar will be at the gallery demonstrating painting styles and weaving baskets from pandanus leaves that they collect, strip and dye.
The exhibition will be at the Dome Gallery, Mission to Seafarers, 717 Flinders Street, Melbourne, from this Friday to March 25.
