Live Performance: This Place Where They Dwell

Public Program

Composer and soprano, Jane Sheldon will perform within the exhibition This Place Where They Dwell, layering live voice over her recorded four note composition created for the four rooms of Lewers House Gallery.

This Place Where They Dwell, 2024 is a major new commission by Diana Baker Smith and is filmed and presented in Modernist artist Margo Lewers’ former home, now the Penrith Regional Gallery. The 4-channel video installation unpacks traces of Lewers’ life, using performance and sound in collaboration with choreographer and performer Lizzie Thomson and composer and soprano Jane Sheldon.

About Jane Sheldon
Jane Sheldon is a soprano and composer who has established an international reputation for highly specialised contemporary opera and art music for voice. Recent performances include the world premieres of Dylan Mattingly’s Stranger Love for the LA Phil, and Mary Finsterer’s Antarctica at Holland Festival and Sydney Festival with ASKOSchönberg and Sydney Chamber Opera, where she is an Artistic Associate. Described as “riveting” (New York Times) and “gripping” (Financial Times), Jane’s compositions focus on the experience of altered or transformative states. Her work is presented around Australia and abroad and includes chamber music, opera installations, electronic music, works for dance companies, and large-scale sound installations for museums and other public spaces. She collaborates frequently with visual artists. Jane’s most recent album is I am a tree, I am a mouth “conceptually brilliant… a vocal and compositional triumph, beautifully realised with splendid restraint” – Limelight Magazine. The release was listed in the New Yorker’s Notable Recordings of 2022.

In Conversation: Diana Baker Smith
Following the performance, join us for a discussion between artist Diana Baker Smith and curator Nina Stromqvist on the newly commissioned exhibition, This Place Where They Dwell.

This Place Where They Dwell has been commissioned by Penrith Regional Gallery, Home of The Lewers Bequest, and has been assisted by UNSW Art & Design and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.