Civic Melancholy, Brackish Songs

Civic Melancholy, Brackish Songs is an inter-regional and inter-disciplinary project, which was funded by a $15,000 grant through the NSW Art Central Regional Creative Industry Program, between fine-art photographer Jamie Holcombe and contemporary composer Chris Sainsbury. Sainsbury wrote a musical composition based on Holcombe's Civic Melancholy photographic project, and Holcombe responded with photographic images inspired by Sainsbury's Brackish Songs song cycle (a series of songs based on a theme). The project culminated in a combined performance and exhibition celebrating a dialogue of cultures between non-traditional collaborators.Jamie and Chris came together through a common interest in mediating the experience of place through their respective creative disciplines. In relation to regional arts practice, and through this project, together they challenge the rhetoric of the parochial, which is so often aimed at the people of regional Australia, and challenge tired 'local colourists' (those who advocate and express romantic notions of regional life, usually and ironically from our cities). They replace it with a creative dialogue between their respective inland and coastal regions.