AustLit

'16 'Olympian Odes' in the tradition of the dada/futurist, trans-lingual voice poem evoking the 'meaning of the Olympics to Australians'. Derived from the text-based, site-specific art work installed at Fig Grove, next to the Homebush Bay main stadium, the odes relate specifically to the first modern Olympics meet in Athens in 1896, the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the Sydney 2000 Olympics and 'the Olympics of the future'. These texts are engraved into the vertical faces of the stone tiers that compose the 'sitting out' areas of Fig Grove. They are composed of words that overlap their first and last letters - as if a baton were being handed over in a relay race. Inside the arrangement of words and their combinations other hidden words and meanings are concealed. A polyphony of alternative readings emerges. Making out the sense of these could be compared to watching a race where the runners keep changing positions, and for a time the outcome is unclear. Since the metrical unit of poetic line is the foot, Relay for Radio revives the connection between poetic rhythm and the dance of feet, the dance in this case evoking a group of running feet in a constantly changing rhythmic relationship with each other.' (ABC Classic FM website)