Solange review – deliciously witchy performance art poses questions for new Volume festival

When it was announced that Solange would headline the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s inaugural Volume festival, the first question was: why? How did the gallery, with no history of producing concerts, snag the Grammy-winning R&B artist (AKA Beyoncé’s sister), who has played Sydney Opera House twice in the past five years but is practically a recluse by pop standards? And for an untried festival, no less.

The answer had to be the Tank: the gallery’s subterranean art space, converted from a second world war oil reservoir. With a concrete floor, lofty seven-metre ceiling and an imposing forest of 125 supporting columns, the 2,200 sq m space is surely one of the world’s more intriguing venues – particularly to a musician who has, in recent years, turned her hand to immersive art performances.

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Volume’s vision would no doubt be compelling to Solange: a festival dedicated to fusing art and music, which platforms performance artists, dancers and sonic experimentalists; a lineup laced with jazz, blues, gospel, hip-hop and funk, from the likes of the 73-year-old Alabama artist and “cosmic bluesman” Lonnie Holley and the LA-based guitar legend and composer Jeff Parker. Whatever drew Solange here, Sydney heard the call too: the artist’s three headlining performances sold out in short order.

The resulting show fit the art-meets-music brief. Audience members, having surrendered their phones, descended into the bowels of the building to find a dramatic, red-lit, cross-shaped stage edged with video screens, with a 10-piece ensemble of singers, brass, guitar and bass already in formation. Was the black-clad figure seated at the centre of the cross Solange? Yes: the artist was present.

There was a decided “performance art” edge to the show: in an early sequence, Solange left the stage to enter a reflective box in the Tank’s corner, where she proceeded to fill a Perspex bath with water from a hose – all captured via a bird’s eye view live feed visible on multiple screens above the stage. Later, we watched on-screen-Solange dancing with her own reflection in a partially frosted mirror to a jazzy drum breakdown with brass flourishes.

Mostly, though, the performance was less theatrical than the artist’s highly staged 2018 Opera House show. Titled “In service to whom”, Solange’s Volume presentation was (per the artspeak in the media release) “created around the posture of rest and speaks to the artist’s re-emergence into the world of everyday life following periods of personal incubation and self-revitalisation at home”. The opening song Weary, from 2016’s A Seat at the Table, set the tone. “I’m weary of the ways of the world,” the singer crooned. Hits from her two most recent albums (Cranes in the Sky was a predictably big moment) were interspersed with voice samples (respect, commitment, trust, trauma and faith were motifs), instrumental interludes and a mix of recent and new orchestral compositions.

There was a deliciously witchy undertow, and at various points Solange danced, lay down and wielded her mic lead like a lasso. But the performance felt tightly scripted, and contained to its four acts. As you might expect from a work of art, every image was precisely curated, controlled – including the live video feed and show photography (seven days after the show Solange’s team still had not approved any images, delaying the publication of this review). If it was hard not to want her and her ensemble to cut loose a little more, it was also impossible to not respect the rigour of her artistry.

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Inevitably in this context, the unscripted moment has a clarion quality, and it came early on: when Solange left the stage to set up for her bath number, the crowd, perhaps confused, devolved into restless chatter that drowned out the instrumental music – and we were admonished for it: “Respect my musicians and you respect me and the compositions I have created.”

Solange wanted an art crowd. But when you put a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter in what is essentially a music festival context, you’re going to get … well, at least a sizeable chunk of the “gig crowd”. As we watched her fill the bath (from which the partially submerged singer would later sing the poignant line “don’t let your water run dry” on repeat), it was impossible not to think of the politics of attention and of care; here was an artist setting her boundaries and issuing a very specific invitation to meet her on her terms. This was a show that asked us to respect the performer, and her wants and needs, above all things.

It raised the question: how can a venue, a festival, an institution, hold space for this kind of work? Particularly one with a limited history of presenting performance and live music. Volume is navigating this tricky territory: across the festival’s 17 days, there are daily performances by independent artists within the galleries (the Sydney dancer Martin Del Amo and the composer-performer Marcus Whale, among them); performances that are often lo-fi and fleeting, and playing to an audience not necessarily prepped for them in this context. There’s magic in that disjunction, but also vulnerability: artists need care on all levels – in the preparation of the work, its production and its presentation to a new audience.

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Audiences need care, too. At the first of Solange’s three performances, audience members were queueing from the moment they entered the gallery at 7pm until 8.40pm, when they were let into the Tank. There was a queue for the one bar in the space, and another for the show – and having waited roughly 40 minutes past the show’s scheduled start time of 8pm (with no explanation or announcement, and no background music), the queues devolved into a messy, rowdy throng. After the show, we were ushered out of the building at barely 10.20pm. Was this a gig or an art performance? That it never felt quite like either was part of the charm, but the pre- and post-show ambience could use some work.

The show itself, however, was satisfyingly unusual, and had that potent “you had to be there” quality that site-specific work often has. Performances by Holley and Parker earlier in the week felt precious too. Volume is a unique proposition for Sydney, with huge potential; with luck, the gallery will refine any teething issues to keep it going.

• Volume festival runs until 8 October at the Art Gallery of NSW