Seven with Another: The Fourth Edition.

I visited the fourth edition of the renowned Seven with Another last Friday night. Not only is this the last edition that will be held at Substation No. 4, this was the edition that one of my favourite people ever, Dominique Falla, was also in. Dominique collaborated with sound designer/composer Ryan Walsh to produce a piece that involve you placing records with different letters on them alongside each other to spell a four letter word, where you could then listen to what you had composed.

Here's a brief timelapse video that Dominique took during opening night, with her iPhone duct-taped to a pipe above us:



Unfortunately as the space was so cramped it was pretty difficult to get photos or even get a decent look at absolutely everything; I even missed out on looking at two of the pieces (a video piece and a dance piece), thus I'll only write about the pieces I actually saw.

As this was the fourth edition, all the artists collaborating had to create something based around the theme of the number four. Benjamin Reeve and Philip Unwin created this flashing skull to represent the concept of tetraphobia: the fear of the number four, which is considered to be an unlucky number (must like the number 13 in Western countries) in countries such as Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan.

Terry Whidborne (illustrator) and Carly Scoufos (sculptor) collaborated to produce the brilliant work on the four horses' heads pictured above, whilst Inkahoots paired up with kinetics artist Michael Candy to act as spokespeople for the anonymous artists that created the controversial "Bitter Bench". The "Bitter Bench" was the first Seven with Another piece to ever be produced off-site, and was installed in response to the Brisbane City Council removing bus shelters to deter the homeless from sleeping there.

The bench would off-load anybody who attempted to sit on it, and played audio of four different homeless people who were interviewed in response to the bus shelters being taken away. It was installed without authorisation of the council and was subsequently removed.

Watch a video of the "Bitter Bench" in action at The Telegraph.

Kathryn Lee (costume designer) and Suzie Wiley (architect) created four life-sized sculptures of four actual people who used to work at the Substation, back when it wasn't a brilliant venue. All in all, yet another fantastic variety of work from a group of talented artists—I can't wait to see what Seven with Another: The Fifth Edition has in store for us in four months, to be held in the more spacious Brisbane Powerhouse. Make sure you come along!