Speak Percussion – one of the world's most innovative forces in contemporary music – marks 25 years of boundary-defying practice with Silent Hand Catches Silver Bell, a major exhibition at the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne.
For 25 years, the Melbourne-based organisation has redefined the possibilities of percussion, creating genre-breaking works that span disciplines and traverse continents.
Led by Co-Artistic Directors Kaylie Melville and Eugene Ughetti – both alumni of the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Fine Arts and Music – Speak Percussion continues to push the boundaries of experimental sound.
Silent Hand Catches Silver Bell brings audiences face-to-face with custom-built instruments, striking installations, and rare archival material that reveal the scale, audacity and ingenuity of their practice.
Silent Hand Catches Silver Bell. Picture by Jeff Busby
"When thinking about the over 200 commissions and groundbreaking collaborations in Speak Percussion's catalogue it has been very difficult to narrow this down!" says Eugene Ughetti.
At the heart of Silent Hand Catches Silver Bell is Speak Percussion's post-instrumental approach: a practice that moves beyond traditional instruments to engage directly with unconventional materials, found objects and bespoke sound-making devices.
Anicca (2016), Matthias Schack-Arnott. Photo: Bryony Jackson
"Speak Percussion has moved beyond traditional instruments into a post-instrumental world, where materials and new instrumental forms shape the music itself. This exhibition showcases the physical artefacts of those innovations from across our 25-year history," says Ughetti.
Exhibition Highlights
- Pigeons — Clay shooting meets avant-garde percussion. In Eugene Ughetti's adrenaline-charged work, premiered at Rising 2025, robotic trap machines launched fluorescent clay targets into a wall of resonant percussive objects. At once fragile, violent, poetic and heroic, Pigeons flips the power dynamic between human and machine. Reinstalled in the Grainger Museum's indoor and outdoor spaces, it will feature a loaded trap machine, large-scale set-pieces, and shattered clay pigeons.
- Polar Force — The sound of Antarctica, brought to life. Visitors are surrounded by pristine Antarctic field recordings and industrial percussion. Combining the aesthetics of research stations with the raw power of ice, wind and water, Polar Force offers an immersive, multi-sensory journey into the coldest, windiest, driest continent on Earth. An entire room at Grainger Museum will be dedicated to the industrial and scientific instruments used to create this acclaimed work, complete with interactive listening stations.
- Simon Løffler's e structure— A luminous sculpture of 15 fluorescent lights that radiate, shimmer and glow as visual percussion, creating a synesthetic display where sound and light are inseparable.
Crushed music stands from The Museum (2024) Steven Kazuo Takasugi. Photo: Jebbah Baum
- Anicca — Percussionist Matthias Schack-Arnott's hypnotic kinetic instrument spins at variable speeds, its textured surfaces producing shifting sonic patterns inspired by Hindu and Buddhist concepts of impermanence and recurrence.
- Large-scale community works such as Liza Lim's Atlas of the Sky and Michael Pisaro's A wave and waves, presented alongside the original instruments from their premieres.
- Fans — Developed with University of Melbourne researchers, this collaborative work transforms everyday computer cooling fans into an interactive sound environment. Visitors can tune the fans and experiment with electromagnetic field microphones to reveal hidden sonic layers, extending Speak Percussion's exploration of the microphone as an instrument from its work Transducer.
- The Museum (Performance) — A new work by American composer Steven Takasugi, developed during his 2024 Grainger Creative Research Residency. Drawing on samples of rare and historic instruments from the Grainger Museum, Takasugi combines electro-acoustic sound archives, theatrical percussion and live electronics. Presented by Speak Percussion, this performance is on 27 November at Melba Hall, with the Grainger Museum open beforehand for an exclusive preview.
Part of Fluorophone (2014), Simon Loeffler. Credit: La Salle College of the Arts
A Global Story Told at Melbourne's Grainger Museum
From collaborations with chefs and architects to space scientists and community participants, Speak Percussion's work crosses borders of discipline and site. With over 200 commissions, their practice has left a deep imprint on the landscape of contemporary music worldwide.
The Grainger Museum's own history of experimental music provides a fitting backdrop, with Speak's artefacts installed alongside the museum's collection to reveal a cultural lineage of sonic innovation.
Formation of waldteufels from Atlas of the Sky (2018), Liza Lim. Photo: Bryony Jackson
"The Grainger Museum is a home for musical mavericks," says Ryan Jefferies, Director, Grainger Museum.
"Percy Grainger was a relentless experimenter who believed music should evolve with new ideas, materials and technologies. Speak Percussion embodies that same fearless spirit. This exhibition not only showcases Speak's extraordinary breadth of creativity but also places it in conversation with Grainger's own legacy here at the University of Melbourne.
"With both Eugene Ughetti and Kaylie Melville proudly alumni of our Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, it feels especially fitting to celebrate 25 years of their groundbreaking work here."
Silent Hand Catches Silver Bell opens at the Grainger Museum Monday 29 September and runs until 2 May 2026, continuing the University of Melbourne's commitment to showcasing interdisciplinary creativity, cutting edge research and distinctive experiences for students.
