The vitrine at the gallery’s far end frames the installation
Overseas (Majestic Fanfare, 1988 version) by Australia-born Brussels-based artist Eleanor Ivory Weber. Three contact
speakers are attached inside, roughly at ear height, turning
the facade into a loudspeaker. The installation is synced to
Sydney, Australian Eastern time. A 9-second orchestral music
piece plays every hour between 6am and 11pm AEST/AEDT, with an 18-second version at 7am only. This means
that, for the most part, the piece is inaudible during gallery
hours, becoming active in the evening and playing overnight
and throughout the morning. Due to the opposing shift into
summer time in Mechelen and out of it in Sydney, the work’s
time frame is pushed forward by an hour twice in the first two
weeks of the exhibition, before settling on the cycle 10pm to
3pm CEST.
The music piece, titled Majestic Fanfare, was written
by British composer Charles Williams in 1935, and since 1952
it has served as the radio news theme for the ABC—Australia’s
public service broadcaster. Australian composer Richard Mills
was commissioned to reorchestrate Majestic Fanfare on the
occasion of the Australian bicentenary commemoration in
1988. That year marked two hundred years since the First
Fleet’s arrival at Sydney Cove in 1788, and the founding there
of the penal colony of New South Wales.
The work’s functioning hinges on its displacement
from a familiar cultural and temporal context. Announcing the
hourly news elsewhere, it operates like a clock: no content, just
structure. The title Overseas (Majestic Fanfare, 1988 version)
points to this displacement, as experienced both on the level of one’s biography and national history. The window overlooks Mechelen’s busy street and the monumental
cathedral with its famous carillon—another time telling
device. Broadcast outward while also resonating inward,
the piece interacts with the city’s soundscape and its policies
of public space.
—Alicja Melzacka, curator eye
below
ear, Kunsthal Mechelen, 2025
