Your work for the Adelaide Biennial draws on your research into Lutheran church organs in the Barossa. What drew you to this subject and what did you discover?  

Spending time in the Barossa Valley I was surprised to learn that it has one of the richest veins of pipe organs in Australia. At dinner parties you inevitably discover that the person you’re talking to owns either a vineyard or an organ, if not both. There are literally more pipes than people. The surplus is due to the influx of two populations in the 19th century, the English and the Germans. At least two locals, Daniel Lemke and Johann Krüger, built their own instruments that you can still see and hear in the valley. They are beautiful, quirky objects that preserve aspects of German craft that are difficult to find even back in Europe.

Julian Day. Photo © Joan Hacker

Is this project building on your 2019 work A Civic Space?

A Civic Space was just the first step in the process. I created this immersive spatial work last winter with members of the local community. We brought together a ‘citizen’s choir’ of about...