Untitled (orchestra) is an ongoing series that explores the inscribing of place through sound. The pitch of Balinese gamelan orchestras traditionally differs between villages, each village using slight variances, meaning that the instruments from one gamelan cannot be used in a gamelan from another village. In this way, sound records a community's unique relationship to place, history, body.

 

Spong's as-yet untitled orchestra slowly accumulates over time, carrying the resonances of places, people, and different bodies of work. They are played either together, during performance events, or individually by gallery invigilators during the exhibition. So far the instruments have been played by Bengisu Ustay, Ahmet Berk Tuzcu, and Kardelen Savci (Istanbul Biennale); Beth Dawson, Jade Farley, Alice Sparrow, and Frances Libeau (Auckland Art Gallery);  Te Coolies  (Michael Lett, Auckland; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth; Spike Island, Bristol; Auckland Art Gallery), Antonia Barnett-McIntosh (daadgallerie, Berlin), and Vivian Wang (ICA, Singapore).

 

Instrument A (Antonia) and Instrument B (Vivian) are a pair of keyed metallophones that use the tuning system of the Balinese gamelan, where paired instruments are purposely detuned to each other, with one of the instruments referred to as the “inhaler,” the other as the “exhaler.” When played simultaneously, these instruments generate ombak, the acoustic beating of sound waves alternating soft and loud, which fills the space between the instruments. Both metallophones, the first made in Berlin and the second in Singapore, use idiosyncratic scales chosen by the musicians who were the first to play them (Aotearoa New Zealand composer Antonia Barnett-McIntosh and the Singaporean musician Vivian Wang). These instruments are the foundations of a gradually developing personal orchestra that marks time, place, and collaboration through pitch and vibration.

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Instrument C (Frances) is a bell plate tuned to E2, which is accompanied by foliage from plants whose branches knock, shake, and tremor against the plate, adding their own scratches, rattles, and jitters to the bell plate’s tone.

 

Instrument D (Vera) is a set of chimes made from aluminium cast french fries, which draws on the use of everyday materials—such as french fries—used by Spong’s family in Bali to make daily offerings, where everyday objects become sites of the sacred.

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Instrument E (Tina) is a set of bronze handbells made using casts from the interior of Spong's cupped hands.

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Instrument F (Alice) is a bell made from seven glass bells, based on the crystal castle described in the Interior Castle (1577) by the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic St Teresa of Avila.

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Instrument H (Monster Chicken) is a piece to be walked with. Compiled of bronze pieces cast from discarded chicken bones collected outside 24 hr chicken shops the artist passed on her way to and from the studio during Covid-19 lockdowns.

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Instrument I (Sevgi and Bengisu) was inspired by the fallen fruit in a dream by the Rābiʿa al-Adawiyya, the first female Sufi saint. Secreted in these bronze sculptures are objects collected from around the city of Istanbul.

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Instrument J (Georgie) is a piece to be walked through the gallery. Inspired by the fox, it is comprised of hundreds of hair pins.

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