ANGEL­I­CA MESI­TI | The Rites of When

Angel­i­ca Mesi­ti is cre­at­ing an immer­sive instal­la­tion for the for­mer wartime oil bunker beneath Naala Badu, the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ north building.

A rich visu­al and son­ic expe­ri­ence, Angel­i­ca Mesi­ti: The Rites of When is a large-scale video and sound instal­la­tion that reimag­ines col­lec­tive and com­mu­nal rit­u­als in rela­tion to sea­son­al cycles, at a time of envi­ron­men­tal uncer­tain­ty and flux.

Mesi­ti adapts chore­og­ra­phy, vocal cho­rus­es, instru­men­ta­tion and col­lec­tive sound-mak­ing to re-exam­ine activ­i­ties famil­iar to com­mu­ni­ties who have deep bonds with sea­son­al rhythms. Ecsta­t­ic cel­e­bra­tions asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic moments in the cal­en­dar – notably mid-win­ter sol­stice car­ni­vals and mid-sum­mer har­vest fes­ti­vals – are played out across sev­en mono­lith­ic screens, offer­ing a por­tal into a realm along­side past and present: an imag­ined alternative.

The Rites of When is also informed by the endur­ing tra­di­tion of depict­ing, describ­ing and under­stand­ing life on Earth by study­ing the move­ments of the stars in the night sky. Ele­ments with­in the Tank ref­er­ence the pre­his­toric Nebra sky disc, which con­tains an ear­ly depic­tion of the Pleiades star clus­ter. In cul­tures around the world, this celes­tial body has been a har­bin­ger of sea­son­al activ­i­ty on land and water. The Pleiades pro­vides a sym­bol­ic car­tog­ra­phy for Mesiti’s instal­la­tion, a ges­ture to com­mu­nal cre­ativ­i­ty on a glob­al scale.

As cycles of regen­er­a­tion in nature shift out of sync and peo­ple around the globe increas­ing­ly live in urbanised envi­ron­ments, removed from nature, The Rites of When explores the pos­si­bil­i­ties of invent­ing new rit­u­als and find­ing adap­tive path­ways for connection.

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