Intertwined, indivisible. Collaborative artists Alison Clouston and Boyd are perhaps a perfect reflection of their installation art. They are individually vital to each work, and to each other. Far from being joined at the hip, they continue to spend time on individual pursuits. (Boyd is a musician, band member and music teacher, while Alison teaches art.) But clearly both revel in the time they spend together, as committed environmentalists, creating multifaceted installations. Alison's visual strength and Boyd's sound sense combine seamlessly into vast and extraordinary artworks, which too often can only be experienced by those lucky enough to experience their exhibitions in person. After months or sometimes years of working toward an exhibit, unlike other works that are purchased and hung, their work is frequently dismembered. australian Art Review asked them if they found the transience left them with an emotional deficit.

ALISON: Generally, the work sustains us. It's exciting to see the installation all come together at last. A good crowded opening night can be very important - to see our friends, show them what we have been doing ... we need to see all sorts of people engage with it ... like when a young guy spent hours with Bonetown, headphones on, totally absorbed. We are sustained by our work because we believe in it; that it is good work. Installing and showing it brings it to fruition. And we look forward to making new work. But sometimes we do feel
hard done by, when we are exhausted and earning nothing. We wish there was more respect for artists in Australia.

aAR: It must be almost impossible to sell your installation works - how can artists survive on this road?

ALISON: Installation works can be sold! Some of our works demand big spaces maybe more suited to a corporate or gallery purchaser; some are smaller, or are wall pieces, like Nestling Nestling, which needs no more space that some big paintings. You could take it home! We survive because we can keep our costs low. We grow
our own food! And because we feed our other earnings into it, and that feeds back, like teaching, commissions, and so on, (we) can feed into the work practice. Our biggest problem is time ... we are so often engaged in running everything to do with our practice, from the creative side, and the practical hands-on making, and all the admin too, that we have little time to put into promo or grant applications. So we sometimes wish we had someone to help us there...

aAR: After your initial meetings in New Zealand, you both came to Australia. Can you recount what
Darlinghurst was like in those days, how it affected you both artistically and co-operatively?

ALISON: It was a coincidence that we both came to Sydney at the same time. I met Boyd again through my sister and he was living around the corner. At that time everyone was living around the corner! There was an animation co-op down the street, artists on very corner, performances in every bar. It was a wonderful time to be in Darlinghurst and Woolloomooloo. Artists could afford to live in proximity to each other in the inner city, even though we never had any money. There was an incredible energy, people were making their artwork outside of the formal dealer gallery system. Some of us were experimenting with collaborative ways of working, like making
peculiar performances. Like The Lapse of the Gods! Most of my work for my 1984 Mori Gallery show had had an earlier life as performance props and outfits.

aAR: Do you agree on how each of you is evolving in your points of view?

ALISON: We are often working on our own problems, and then we come together, maybe for coffee or lunch, and we talk over where we are at. Maybe we'll listen to work Boyd's been slaving at the computer on, through the sound system. Or I'll ask him to come out and have a look at the gigantic tree we have installed on the grass outside. So one person's problem might be solved by the developments in the others'. It's a constant intertwining going on, so the developments in the sound and the visual are not really in parallel, but are continually winding across and around each other.

aAR: Nestling, Nestling is a major installation. What roles did each of you play in their creation?

BOYD: We walk together in the bush every day. We had been picking up fallen and abandoned birds nests over many years - Alison had been collecting them in her studio.

ALISON: I knew that one day I wanted to do another work with them. When I had around 40, I asked Boyd to join me in devising a piece.

BOYD: At the time, I had been thinking about sound as a way that we position ourselves in space. I'd been reading about how people in medieval towns and countryside could navigate by the sounds of different church bells or market calls. (Nowadays impossible with the relentless noise we live with.) Out here in the bush, we'd noticed the frogs around the dam using calls to locate themselves in relation to each other. I was working on some music for saxophones based on this call-and-answer in space, and I decided this could work well with
the nests... like the nests' imagined inhabitants communicating across space. So with multiple channels,
this is what we did, each nest having its own "voice", or speaker.

ALISON: So I had then to choose and house the multitude of speakers that would be needed, in a way that worked poetically and visually with the nests. It became clear that the speakers could not go inside the nests - it was too important that the viewer could take pleasure in peering into them, and the tiniest speakers were still too big to sit deep inside. So I came up with the idea of weaving my own "speaker nests" from aluminum wire, to sit below each "talking" nest.

BOYD: I thought that people could "play" the work by triggering the sounds as they approached, the effect being like a colony of agitated birds. Using sound triggers. The speaker nests could talk to each other, and the visitors. Making people aware of the idea of navigating with sound.

aAR: Is it always straightforward for you in a collaborative sense - do you always agree with how a
work is progressing - in its direction or point of view?

ALISON and BOYD: We discuss and discuss to reach consensus, and it has worked so far! It depends on the trust and respect for each one's field of expertise, we think, and the sense that the sum of the parts will be greater than the two parts on their own. And we both share the belief that all the arts used to be interconnected like this... visual art was for millennia always mixed up with theatre, and music was mixed up with visual arts and dance and all. It's a fairly recent Western idea to segregate and pigeonhole the arts.

Image: Alison Clouston and Boyd, Nestling Nestling, 2004, (detail), 40 Australian native birds' nests, interactive soundtrack, movement sensors, aluminium, speakers, wiring 'tree' or stave. Courtesy the artists.