Record Requiem, 2014

Cast Bronze
450mm high each piece
City of Port Phillip
Library and Heritage centre redevelopment, South Melbourne Town Hall

Vinyl LPs capture and record, in a unique format, a certain period of Australian culture. This sculpture evokes a time in recent history when record collections were king, and took pride of place in lounge rooms across Australia. Every party was centered around the turntable, and LP covers were studied intently as sources of vital information. Large collections were hauled form house to house, party to party, and catalogued and stored as the only permanent source of music. They were jealously guarded and the dream of every music hopeful to have their own recording contract with one of these great labels.

This nostalgic sculpture serves as a marker for changing technology, as a dominant form of recording falls to a digital revolution.

LP records were the last tactile, physical compendium of music. After vinyl (an analogue technology), CDs and the digital format reduced a vast music collection to the size of a nanobot. The all important album pictures and cover art, the classic images of generations, no longer accompany the music of an artist. LP records were intensely visual and tactile, filled with information and unique to a few generations.

The once cherished and king of music is deposed in a digital revolution, and this is a memorial.