AMIAS HANLEY
SUNKLAND
10 minutes, 30 seconds
This multichannel audio work imagines a speculative swampland wherein multiple species, forms and forces are transforming through a series of open-ended vocal exchanges. This work is a sonic fabulation that is informed by a pre-colonised Carrum Carrum Swamp, settler governance of watercourses and the drainage of wetlands in the area where McClelland Sculpture Park exists, Bunurong Country, Australia. The swampland is a slice of tangled time—it carries both remnants of the past and feelings of futurity, which coalesce in a kind of nonlinear discontinuous present.
SUNKLAND draws on queer perspectives of non-biological kin and the sonic body as a site of becoming and ambiguity. Exploring the poetics of care and exchange through themes of hybridity and heritage, the work invites listeners to imagine the ways that kinship might be felt through embodying the expressions of another species or form—questioning, how might these events allow for listening to the worlds of others in ways that matter?
EXHIBITED 2023
McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Langwarrin AU
The McClelland Collection
7.1 Channels
EXHIBITED 2022
Ars Electronica Festival, Welcome to Planet B, Linz AT
Immersive Sounds – External Worlds
20.4 Channels
EXHIBITED 2021
McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Langwarrin AU
Site & Sound: Sonic Art as Ecological Practice
24.2 Channels
Acquired 2021
McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery
COMmISSION 2020
Liquid Architecture
CURATORs
Simon Lawrie, Joel Stern
Ars Electronica Catalogue
Welcome to Planet B - A different life is possible. But how?

McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, SUNKLAND install, 2021
Image: Devika Bilimoria

Ars Electronica Festival, Welcome to Planet B, Immersive Sounds – External Worlds, 2022
Image: Florian Voggeneder

McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, The McClelland Collection, 2023
Image: Devika Bilimoria