Read a review of Greer Honeywill's Secrets and Lies, at Artabase.

In an intimate and responsive sound environment artist Greer Honeywill explores 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), to be staged at Flinders Lane Gallery, October 19 – November 6.

In this work Honeywill continues to focus on the domestic domain as she looks at the way secrets emerge from the patterns of daily life 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’, 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 acted out daily on television programs such as Oprah or Dr Phil.

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

To find out more please visit Honeywill’s project website at www.secretsandlies.com.au

Below you can listen to one of the sonic collages from Greer's show. These collages evoke the sites where the sounds of the environment create comfort, or alternatively, a privacy barrier that assists the telling of the secret. The collages are threaded together with the secrets, to be experienced within the gallery.