It is a pleasure to announce that Ivan Mršić will be taking up our Autumn Artist Residency, during which time he will work toward the completion of his exhibition, Read Me As You Wish, which opens at the Audio Foundation on Tuesday 18 April.
Ivan Mršić is an interdisciplinary visual artist, percussionist, composer and improviser who’s long running practice builds on the foundations of avant-garde music, performance, experimentation and art. He has a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, and studied percussion at the Conservatory of Music, Montreux, Switzerland.
His practice operates on the assumption that virtually anything can become a musical instrument under certain conditions. This expanded understanding of sculpture, sound, music and musical instruments has led Mršić to work with discarded everyday objects, fascinated to explore their sonic potential. His research and ingenuity has led to the creation of a number of unique instruments (“Theareye Collection”), including his iconic ‘kitchen sink with springs’ that lends a signature sound to his compositions. He and his instruments are regular performers and collaborators at Vitamin S (Auckland’s weekly improvised music gathering) and at many of New Zealand’s significant improvised music events such as the 2010 Sound Invention Convection Festival.
Mršić’s abstract video animations explore the relationship between sound and image and have been shown internationally in galleries and at animation festivals, notably across the 90 metre facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. Combining his interests in sound and moving images, The Projection Band was founded in 2009. With this experimental impro-noise group Mršić has performed throughout Aotearoa and at the Ganz Novi Festival in Zagreb, Croatia in 2015.
In 2016 Mršić developed the project Kakokarangaphonia, a time-scored orchestra of noise, for the Te Tuhi exhibition Share/Cheat/Unite, which was recognised with an award of excellence at the Museums Aotearoa Conference. Unique versions of the piece were later performed at the Christchurch Art Gallery and Te Papa Museum before being performed in South Korea, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. In addition to his own works, Mršić has also composed sound for short films and for et.al.’s artworks ‘De-cryption’ 2013 commissioned by the Auckland Art Gallery for the exhibition Freedom Farmers and ‘Trans– cryption’ 2011. Recently he has collaborated with many artists, musicians and dancers, and with Kristian Larsen formed duo AileronS.