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The musical piece was composed by Grace Turner and is an exploration of nature, grief, the psyche and the soul. Performance/video artist and painter Lottie Consalvo created the visuals for the music after Turner and Consalvo realised they had similar feelings surrounding these ideas and wanted to work on something together.

Turner made the music while she was looking after a one-hundred-year-old cottage for her godmother and caring for the well-loved though neurotic farm kelpie, Jala, in the rural town of Tanja on the South Coast of NSW. Turner reflects on the creation of this piece:

“I was struck by the isolation of where I was. I had just returned from playing in the US and I was plunged into the silence of a place very far away from civilisation. Within this quiet I found I could hear the world more sensitively, the spirits, the animals, myself. I was scared, I felt small within nature and I was in awe. If I didn’t build a fire, I’d freeze. If I didn’t pump the dam I would have no water. The divide between human and nature was thinner. I had a little studio set up with the intention to write new music. Once recording I felt the vocalisations that were coming from me were painful and that I was wailing and grieving through my voice. The creation of the song was all improvised; I was writing it as I was recording it and trying to get sounds from my instruments that expressed what I was feeling. No programmed instruments were used and there was very little editing done afterwards.”

Lottie and Grace had been emailing one another throughout the pandemic years, with Grace sharing field recordings she had made and Lottie using them as sounds to paint to. Lottie produced the first part of the song from footage taken from cameras set up in the bush. When making the second part of the video they decided to film it together. Within the footage there is an abstract sense of longing, finding, leaving with no specific place.

‘Hiraeth’ is a Gealic word that comes to mind – a spiritual longing for home which maybe never was. The echo of the lost places of our soul’s past and our grief for them. It is the wind, and the rocks, and the waves. It is nowhere and it is everywhere.

Supported by the City of Newcastle’s Community Support Grants Program.