In an intimate and responsive sound environment artist, Greer Honeywill explored the inherent power of secrets. Do you have a secret? This is the question at the heart of the making of the sound installation, Secrets (and lies), staged at Flinders Lane Gallery, October 19 – November 6, 2010.
If you have a secret, write it in the confidential box at the bottom of this page.
In this ongoing or serial work Honeywill continues to focus on the domestic domain as she looks at the way secrets emerge from the patterns of daily existence and the human need to construct lies or harbour secrets as a means of negotiating life. Seemingly innocent lies such as the existence of Father Christmas and more potent lies or secrets that have the potential to cause great personal harm.
Until recently it was a cultural norm for certain events in life to be ‘put away’, ‘buried’, ‘swept under the carpet’, made guilty secrets, because the particular events were considered shameful, embarrassing or unlawful. But social patterns continually change and today the reverse is true. We now embrace the assumption that revealing secrets is morally superior to keeping them and that it is automatically healing to reveal a secret. In Secrets (and lies) Honeywill explores the validity of this commonly held belief.
A secret can be a heavy weight to carry. When the secret is not ours but rather passed on by someone close to us who feels the need to relieve the pressure of the burden by sharing the secret, the act of communicating the information may simply transfer the burden to another – especially if it must remain hidden.
He said I could not tell anyone…like no-body…it had to be a full secret…This secret, this knowing, I carry with me day and night…forever in my head.
From an anonymous secret, Secrets (and lies), Greer Honeywill, 2010
The selfish secret is perfectly illustrated by Tim Winton’s character Sando in, Breath. Sando keeps secret a very particular surfing location from others who would be desperate to know and experience the wave.
All this time, said Sando. Surfing the place on my own. Watching it, biding my time, keeping my little secret. Funny, you know, but it was nice to share. A real surprise but it felt good. So maybe the best part about having a secret is letting someone else in on it.
Tim Winton, Breath, p.98
When an experience is exceptionally puzzling, uncomfortable or damaging it is often compartmentalised by the individual, buried in the unconscious, made secret for years until one day for no apparent reason…perhaps while walking with a colleague, or even a stranger, the story bubbles insistently to the surface.
Film Director, Mike Leigh was so fascinated by the act of secrecy within the family unit he made the film, Secrets and Lies, in 1996. In the film he explores the potency of a single secret. When the family gathers for a barbecue the occasion becomes a stage for the revelation of a particularly uncomfortable secret about a baby put up for adoption at birth, a baby never before acknowledged within the family. The changed reality profoundly affected every family member.
On a larger stage secrets and lies through the ages have had the power to unseat governments, to change history and start wars.
Honeywill’s art practice is often characterized by the act of gathering. For this project she has personally gathered stories and encouraged people to come forward to participate in the work, a methodology she has employed in previous projects. Each secret is contributed anonymously but this in no way diminishes the power of the secret to affect the listener.
The artist has conjectured about places where secrets are often shared and she has gathered the sounds of the sites to create a sonic collage to evoke the sites where the sounds of the environment create comfort, or alternatively, a privacy barrier that assists the telling of the secret.
The secrets and the sonic collages have then been threaded together like a necklace to be experienced within the gallery.
But Honeywill continues to ask, ‘do you have a secret?’
Greer Honeywill is grateful for the assistance of all participants, supporters and contributors, Craig Pilkington, (Audrey Studios), Erik North (Lev) and Flinders Lane Gallery.
DO YOU HAVE A SECRET? Send it (secretly) to Greer…
