Voices from under the earth: Hazel Smith and Sieglinde Karl

Earlier this year Secret Places, a multisensory orchestration of responses to the natural world, was installed at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston. Secret Places was a many-faceted experience, a collaboration between the Sydney poet Hazel Smith and three Tasmanians: artist Sieglinde Karl, composer Ron Nagorka and photographer Kate Hamilton. With respect to Hamilton and Nagorka, who visually and aurally transported the audience to the secret casuarina grove, I here focus on half of this engaging and highly complex project: the collaboration between Sieglinde Karl and Hazel Smith.