Sounding Botany Bay: Tim Nohe

Sounding Botany Bay: an exhibition on how humans have changed a unique Australian environment

Tim Nohe, intermedia artist, Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA), UMBC

Timothy Nohe will introduce audiences to the deeply woven human narrative of Botany Bay, Australia in this American debut exhibition. The artist worked in Australia from 2006-2007 while on an Australian-American Fulbright Commission Senior Scholar fellowship, and returned for intensive research residencies for the next nine years. During that time, change inexorably swept the Bay.

By walking through bush and dunes, suburban streets and industrial estates, Nohe was able to directly observe the Bay with contemplative discipline. The artist was ready to document discoveries with digital audio recorders and cameras, and comprehensive database searches in state and national libraries, and the online market eBay. Over time he became aware of seasonal and long-term rhythms accented by notes of discordant change. A world of inaudible sound was sampled via a radio frequency scanner, allowing Nohe to intercept air traffic at Sydney Airport; hydrophones captured otherwise inaudible underwater sounds in mangroves, docks and tidepools.

These resources reveal truths about a complex place, told with mural prints, video, sound, interviews, archival documents, and material culture. In many ways this story mirrors our American experience related to human stewardship, the colonization and the decimation of indigenous peoples, industrialization, national narratives, globalization and climate change.  

Bio: Timothy Nohe is an artist and educator engaging traditional and electronic media in daily life and public places. His artwork has been focused on sustainability and place, intermedia works, and sound scores for dance and video. He was the recipient of a 2006 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award from the Australian – American Fulbright Commission and an Australian – American Fulbright Commission Fulbright Alumni Initiative Grant in 2011. Nohe has forged strong ties to Australia, serving the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Unlikely, as an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and as an Artist-in-Residence at the Centre for Creative Arts at La Trobe University.

Sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities; the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery; the Visual Arts Department; and the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts.