Perth Voice Interactive

DELIBERATELY barren, witch and bitch were just some of the many arrows fired at Julia Gillard.

The vicious treatment of Australia’s first female prime minister in the national parliament and across the media exposed deep-seated gender discrimination in politics and the wider community, says composer Cat Hope.

Now she and seven female composers have set their feelings to music with After Julia: it’s a sonic perspective on the former Labor PM, performed by the Decibel New Music Ensemble.

“I noticed a change in the way [this] prime minister was treated,” Hope says.

Which got her thinking about her own workplace: “It made me question the ideas I had about Australia being very egalitarian and open.

“There are many women composers active in Australia, [but] very few…appear in concert programs.”

The North Perth local’s composition Tough it Out is named after what Ms Gillard said she did when negotiating obstacles to simply doing her job, “because there was so much noise and interference”.

The piece isn’t Labor versus Liberal, Hope says: “I was very keen for it to be about Julia and not her politics.”

She uses electronic music to convey a sense of frustration and discordance: “This concept of trying to continue doing something you have been trained to do, through all kinds of railroading, is used as a structural device.”

The world premiere in Sydney last year featured newly commissioned works by Australian female composers—Hope, Gail Priest, Thembi Soddell, Cathy Milliken, Micheala Davies, Andree Greenwell and Kate More. The Perth show adds an eighth, Yokine local Laura Lowther.

“My piece is loaded media quotes…it’s about the internet and clickbait and how it’s getting more extreme.”

(Clickbait is the term used for sensationalist online headlines designed to entice viewers to click to read more).

“[Clickbait], and intentionally misleading words, can lead to inaccurate assumptions about everything from local news to global events,” Lowther says.

Using electronic sounds heard around the office, the piece builds: “to a cacophony…that …agitates and comforts the audience, like elevator music made from the barrage of notification and computer sounds,” Lowther says.

Greenwell adds music to Hilary Bell’s Raining, which talks of “arrows with their poison tips” to convey Ms Gillard’s treatment and gender discrimination.

They draw no blood
No bruises to show
Death comes oh so slow…
The toxic little shocks
The thousand poisoned pricks
The thousand vicious kicks
Designed to remind you of your place…
They fly and fall and find their mark.

After Julia, sponsored by Tura New Music, is on Monday April 20, 7.30pm at PICA, James Street Northbridge. Tix $25 at pica.org.au/buy

by JENNY D’ANGER