Paul Irving is a Melbourne based visual/sound artist who creates steel sculpture, furniture, animatronics and sound installations. Paul devises performances and collaborative projects for festivals, and builds props for Australian and international theatre, film and TV.
Paul has been involved in site specific installation and public art projects on a collaborative and solo basis since 1992. He has been involved in public art projects with Melbourne Fringe Festival, Big West, Earthcore, Maroondah festival and Moomba River Spectacular. His work has exhibited in numerous locations including curated group shows at the Museum of Modern Art Heide and McClelland galleries.
He recently created the installation ‘While You Were Sleeping’ where he transformed his house into a gallery, each room being a unique space that challenged concepts of domestic boundaries. Pauls works often has a political or social agenda, informed by his aspirations of a society that embraces self-governance. His methods demand sustainable practices using waste material wherever possible, in the development and construction of all projects. Paul engages industry, sourcing and redirecting waste products before they become part of societies ever-growing burden of landfill. This aspect of his creativity is cost effective and makes for a powerful commentary on consumption in excess.
Paul’s past collaborative live sound art projects Insect-a-sonic and Terror All Stars, and his vehicle based sound sculpture/performance art piece Sound Machine, are telling examples of his willingness to fuse his sculpture work with a sonic experimentalism , all coming together as anarchic/ tribal/ post industrial art. Pauls punk aesthetic, his background in mechanics and passion for glitch electronics, fuse to create an authentic and unique sound field. He is an textural percussionist and for Autonomous Black introduces his made and modified musical instruments. Paul’s steel bells are modified LPG bottles cut to various lengths to achieve specific notes and tones. The organ used in Autonomous Black, found on the side of the road and then deconstructed and modified, now has a new life as a sonic sculptural object. This aspect of Paul’s work is in constant development., The instruments are a juxtaposition of trash and beauty, through the transformation and metamorphosis of industrial and domestic waste.
