Peter Kennedy
Born 1945, Brisbane, Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia 

The Presence of the Past (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
drums, CRT monitors, video loops of WWII German army, Joseph Stalin’s hand, marching and other sound Collection of Michael Machin 

Icarian Dreamer – with fallen words (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
opened book (burnt front and back covers) mounted on music stand attached to top of steel pole, steel base with small speakers, tape-recorded words
Collection of Michael Machin 

The Golden Light of the East (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993 sixteen brass cymbals (of graduated diameter) mounted on steel pole and base with small speakers / resonators and amplified, tape-recorded sounds
Collection of Michael Machin 

The South (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
alloy loudspeaker with polystyrene extension, steel pole, timber pallet, car door, side mirror
Collection of Michael Machin 

Siren: The North – After Mayakovsky (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
loudspeaker with whistle mounted on a steel pole and base with microphone, tripod, cylinder of compressed air, three television sets with superimposed LED tablets, loudspeakers
Collection of Michael Machin

Canon (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
books (burnt), loudspeaker mounted on wood batten, partially blackened/burnt, wood grain laminated panel on four castors Collection of James C. Sourris 

The End of History (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
refrigerated electric fan and music stand (reconfigured as angel’s wings) mounted on tripods above a metal box gutter containing water, with submerged words “all that is solid melts into air” set on plywood platform
Collection of James C. Sourris 

Grave of the Enlighteners (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993 painted aluminium alloy loudspeaker and polystyrene extension, plinth 

Emissary (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
degraded aluminium alloy loudspeaker, electric fan mounted on steel poles, world globe 

The Square of Red (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
red light fitted to lens and inserted into aluminium alloy loudspeaker, mounted on steel pole and base and tablet made of wood, two textual elements 

…and the utopias. They rise into the sky and turn pale (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
ladder, pillows, two monitors displaying looped video images

Lulu: epilogue and prologue (Chorus: From the Breath of Wings) 1993
two fluorescent tubes with music sheets, black and white monitor with newsreader as Angel of History mounted on timber, fixed to tripod with a light bulb, massed cassette tape and pillow at the base

Presented by the Biennale of Sydney
Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Meanjin (Brisbane)

German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin once described the symbolic “angel of history” as looking back “toward the past. Where a chain of events appears to us, he sees one single catastrophe which relentlessly piles wreckage upon wreckage”. This allegory provides the basis for the works in Peter Kennedy’s Chorus: From the Breath of Wings where in assemblages, representative of the collapse of a major political and philosophical paradigm, appear like a junkyard-style funerary parade for the future. 

Looking at the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the fall of Romania’s government, the dissolution of the Eastern European bloc and the disintegration of the USSR, Kennedy’s ‘chorus’ of sentinels places the downfall of institutionalised socialism and totalitarian communism center stage. Focusing on the popular idea of learning from the past, Kennedy conducts a mourning song for the end of progress march and those ideas that marched in time.