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FEDERATION ARTS ACADEMY DIRECTOR OPENS INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION WITH ‘MUSIC OF IMAGES’

The Director of Federation University Australia’s Arts Academy will present a concert of new chamber music to mark the opening of a new international exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

On Saturday 20th May, Federation Associate Professor Rick Chew will lead his ensemble Inscape Piano Trio – with himself at the piano, international concert violinist Dunja Lavrova and Melbourne-based cellist Dr Lachlan Dent – in a concert featuring original compositions as part of the 2023 Ballarat Heritage Festival.

The concert will mark the opening of a touring international exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite Drawings and Watercolours from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Rick has composed a new piece for this occasion, called P.R.B, which takes its inspiration from selected art works in the exhibition catalogue and the vivid, complex social, personal relationships and ideas which helped to define the aesthetic of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

The concert will also include Hiraeth, a meditation on a Welsh traditional song about longing and nostalgia for an imagined past; and instrumental arrangements of Scottish and Irish traditional songs, which speak to the spiritual encounter with nature and sense of place in the landscape paintings in the Pre-Raphaelites Drawings and Watercolours exhibition.

Tickets for the event are available at https://ballaratheritagefestival.com.au/explore/inscape-piano-trio-the-music-of-images with all proceeds going to the Art Gallery of Ballarat.  

Quotes attributable to Federation University Arts Academy Director, Associate Professor Rick Chew

“I am delighted to present this new ensemble Inscape Piano Trio at the Art Gallery of Ballarat. The acoustic is perfect for chamber music and to play surrounded by paintings that have been an inspiration for much of my recent music is a joy.”

“I feel a particular affinity with the Pre-Raphaelites, having grown up in Birmingham, where the city Art Gallery and Museum has an extensive collection of these works. So, it was a privilege to be invited by the Art Gallery of Ballarat to celebrate the opening of this major exhibition from the Ashmolean with a musical response.”