Gail Priest

Gail Priest is a sound artist, curator and writer living on the land of the Darug and Gundungurra people now known as Katoomba, NSW. She has a multi-faceted practice in which sound is the key material of communication and investigation. Focused on encouraging intensive engagement with the aural she variously employs voice, machine noise, harmonic material, text and video to explore the liminal zone between figuration and abstraction.

She has exhibited her own sound-based media installations nationally and internationally. Most recently, in collaboration with Thomas Burless, she presented Five Self-Vibrating Regions of Intensities, a five-room exploration of sound and vibration, the animate and inanimate, commissioned by The Substation. This was an extension of the ideas explored in A continuous self-vibrating region of intensities, a performance commissioned by Performance Space and The Substation in 2019, also created with Thomas Burless. Another recent project is the GPS audiowalk Songs For Phantom Dances, created in collaboration with Amy Flannery, commissioned by PACT Centre for Emerging Artists. Her installation SonoLexic, exploring the connection between sound and language toured nationally as part of Experimenta Make Sense (2017-2020). The Sounding the Future project, undertaken as part of her Australia Council Emerging and Experimental Arts Fellowship, had presentations at ISEA2016 Hong Kong, .moveOn, New Media Art from Australia, Canada and Europe, Germany and UTS Gallery, Sydney as well as radio and publication outcomes.

Originally trained as a theatremaker, she works as a composer and sound designer for performance and dance collaborating with independent directors and choreographers, most recently working with Lee Serle on Time Portraits at The Substation (nominated for a Green Room Award); and Sunshine Super Girl by Andrea James (Performing Lines) that toured nationally including the Sydney Festival 2021, Darwin Festival, Brisbane Festival, Adelaide Festival Centre and Melbourne Theatre Company.

She performs semi-improvised electronic music and releases experimental music on her own label Metal Bitch as well as Flaming Pines, Endgame records and room40. In addition to curating exhibitions, concerts and screening programs she founded the online directory, Audible Women, highlighting the work of female identifying artists working with sound.  She writes fictively and factually about sound and media art working for RealTime Magazine (2001-2018). She was contributor and editor of the book Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia (2009, UNSW Press) and sits on the editorial board of Sound, Stage, Screen journal (University of Milan).

In 2023 she completed a PhD at the University of Technology, exploring mediated ficto-criticism as an alternate approach to sound theory. www.gailpriest.net

Gail is our 2023 Orange House by the Sea Resident, was a key note speaker in Hi-Viz 2018 and a writer-in-residence for Hi-Viz 2021