THE NSW minister for community services and women was in Albury on Saturday as part of an art show that combined music, visual art, film and prose.
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Goulburn MP Pru Goward penned prose for the To Be There show at the Albury Art Gallery, a 40-minute collaborative piece capturing the feeling of three Central Australian caves.
One of the country’s most highly regarded saxophone players Stephen O’Connell composed pieces for the band that played with a Jenny Pietsch film that showed the makings of a painting of the caves by visual artist Sid Palazzi.
Ms Goward’s prose was layered over the top of the film and music.
Ms Goward, a long-time friend of O’Connell, said she seized any moment to become involved in productions such as To Be There.
Poetry is in Ms Goward’s heart, and she wrote long before she became an ABC journalist and politician.
O’Connell said the piece started with music inspired by three caves, about 240 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs.
“I was sitting in a dryish creek bed looking back at the three caves,” he said.
“I was imagining trying to be there.”
The rest of the piece would come as O’Connell sat inside the caves itself and tried to translate for those who never set foot in them what it felt like.
“It’s a sense of isolation and openness there that you don’t get anywhere else in Australia,” he said.
He said it was about explaining how a painting is formed, showing how Palazzi’s interpretation of the caves is put together.
