
Beth Dawson aka Ducklingmonster is an audio-visual artist from Onehunga, Auckland | Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand | Aotearoa.
She investigates out of bounds areas through a range of practices with a focus on community empowerment. Publicly her work has predominantly been in experimental sound performance, most notably in the group The Futurians, and solo as Ducklingmonster. Blatantly and happily ignoring the restrictions of media she works in sound, ink, video, broken electronics, and whatever else takes her fancy. She is a founding member of Tāmaki Makaurau based art collective Uniform. In 2022 she completed a Masters Of Visual Art at AUT receiving the Head of School award for her practice-based research into elevating and valuing that which is temporary, collective, amateur, and improvised.
Curriculum Vitae
Beth Dawson | Ducklingmonster
Born 1978
Auckland | Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand | Aotearoa
Master of Visual Arts, AUT, 2022
AD22 Award Head of School Award
Projects
- Pyramid Club, 10/02/2023, Gesture Ponders Music https://www.pyramidclub.org.nz/gesture-ponders-music
- AUT Art & Design Graduate Showcase, 17/11/2022, https://artanddesign.aut.ac.nz/student-work/hanging-out-for-real-enacting-improvisations-with-audio-visual-materials-to-create-installational-amplifications-in-social-city-sites-i-inhabit
- Old Folks Association Hall,8/10/2022 The Girl and The Monster book launch
- Audio Foundation, 14/09/2022, Ambient Television, http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/live-events/ambient-television-no-3
- St Paul St Gallery, MVA Show, Hanging Out For Real, 29/06/2022
- St Paul St Gallery, Frontbox, 09/05/2022, Go on then…Begin Again
- Whammy Backroom, 14/04/2022, The PreauriIcular Pit
- Pyramid Club, 27/10/2021, Portals, https://www.pyramidclub.org.nz/ducklingmonster-todd-luffa-and-jonny-marks
- Audio Foundation, 22/10/2021, Live Stream In Your Dreams, https://vimeo.com/638082929
- Flying Out, 10/07/2021, Future Past Present: Instore
- Te Uru, Cross Modal 3: Moving images https://www.teuru.org.nz/index.cfm/whats-on/events/cross-modal-3-moving-images/
- Wine Cellar, 26/05/2021, Cross Modal 1: Audio Visual Performances, http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/live-events/cross-modal-1
- Audio Foundation, 14/05/2021, Rock Night: Pumice, Soft Rock, DJ Kiran Dass, video and installation by Ducklingmonster
- Artspace Aotearoa, 7/05/2021, Conversation Pieces, https://www.artspace-aotearoa.nz/exhibitions/conversation-pieces
- Never Projects, 9/04/2021, Flight Mode 9, https://www.neverprojectspace.com/performance/flight-mode-flight_9
- Basement Theatre, 24/11/2020, Star Gazing: AV collaboration Tru Paraha & Ducklingmonster
- Jutland St, 24/10/2020, Heavy Space wall and video works
- Audio Foundation, 13/10/2020, Now Hear This! A Festival of Urgent Sound, Adventurous Music and Deep Listening, http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/festival/now-hear-this-festival-2020
- Artspace Aotearoa, 4/07/2020, New Artists Show 2020: AV Nights, Pukekawa, Moon, Offering, Indoor https://artspace-aotearoa.nz/exhibitions/new-artists-show-2020
- Basement Theatre, 3/07/20, Ideas in Residence https://basementtheatre.co.nz/
- Goethe Institut, 30/11/2019, Sound of X Project, https://www.goethe.de/ins/nz/en/kul.html
- Loop Project Space Melbourne, 21/08/2019, A Century A Salt – Experimental Sounds and Sights from Aotearoa http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/international/a-century-a-salt
- Outlier Festival, 16/08/2019-18/08/2019, He aha e tangi te kainga rite? Live multi-channel https://www.undertheradar.co.nz/news/16149/Lineup-Announced-For-Outlier-Festival-2019.utr
- Audio Foundation, 28/08/2019 – 21/09/2019, He aha e tangi te kainga rite? | What sounds like home?’, an exhibition of expanded film + a publication, http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/exhibitions/uniform-he-aha-e-tangi-te-kainga-rite
- Flying Out, 27/04/2019, Hair, Skin, Nails: publication and drawings, https://www.facebook.com/events/384815332103176
- Liquid Architecture International presentation: Ducklingmonster | Liquid Architecture, Melbourne, 29/04/2018, Liquid Architecture: POLYTHINKING
- RM & Artweek Auckland, 6/10/2017-15/10/2017, He aha e tangi te kainga rite? / What sounds like home? http://artweekauckland.co.nz/events/central/5164320753188864
- Te Tuhi, 12/08/2017 – 22/10/2017, Lisa Crowley: The Incandescents, sound design, http://www.tetuhi.org.nz/whats-on/exhibitiondetails.php?id=185
- Aotearoa Digital Art: Storm Channels, 28/07/2017-30/07/2017, Le Tre Arterie, http://www.stormchannels.co.nz/anteroom.html
- Audio Foundation, 18/03/2017 – 1/04/2017, Sonic Comic http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/exhibitions/sonic-comic
- Michael Lett Gallery, Sriwhana Spong having-seen-snake, 25/01/17 Performance of Instrument A &B http://michaellett.com/exhibition/sriwhana-spong/
- Blue Oyster Project Space, 7/05/2016- 28/06/2016, Uniform: Exchange (south), http://www.blueoyster.org.nz/exhibitions/uniform/
- Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, 7/4/16-17/07/16, Uniform: Exchange (north), http://www.teuru.org.nz/index.cfm/whats-on/calendar/uniform-exchange/
- The Upstairs Art Gallery, 17/04/2016- 15/05/2016, Mr Heartbreak w/ Chris Knox, Kelly O’Brien, Stefan Neville, Ducklingmonster
- RM, 15/03/2017-01/04/2017, Uniform Make Room, http://rm103.org/?p=1172
- Artspace, 01/11/2015-01/01/2016, Artspace Studio Residency, Uniform: Carpark, http://www.artspace.org.nz/news/default.asp?post=51
- Nga Taonga Sound and Vision, 18/11/15 – 11/12/15, Helga Fassonaki K H A L, “8 Pillars”, http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/exhibitions/helga-fassonaki-khal
- Pyramid Club, 29/01/15 – 28/02/15, Dearest Cousin Ghastlie: Karren Dale & Ducklingmonster,
- Audio Foundation, 5/02/2015 – 28/02/2015, Ducklingmonster: Pink, Pink, Blue, http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/exhibitions/ducklingmonster-pink-pink-blue-opens-thursday-5-february
- Ponsonby Central & Nga Taonga Sound and Vision, 27/02/05 – 8/03/2015 Summer Art Show, Experimental Cinema showreel
- URL Bandcamp, Vol1 14/11/14, Vol2 17/4/16, Vol3 29/8/16, Deep & Meaningful Postcard and Download Compilation, https://deepmeaningful.bandcamp.com/music
Education
2022 Master of Visual Art (MVA Disitniction), AUT
2004 Level 5 Diploma in Information and Library Studies, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
2001 Bachelor of Arts, Honours in Art History and Theory, University of Otago
Publication
- Dawson, B. (2022) The Girl and The Monster. Auckland, New Zealand: No Label
- Quilter, B . (2020) Happiness is Luxury. Auckland, New Zealand: Independent Woman Records
- Cudby, C., Dawson, B., Neville, I., (2017) Sonic Comic. Auckland, New Zealand: Self-published
- Harris, A (2017) The Roaring Silence, Auckland, New Zealand: Depot Press
- Joyce, R., Laing, S., Neville., I (2016). Three Words: An Anthology of Aotearoa/NZ Women’s Comics Auckland, New Zealand: Beatnik Publishing
- LOUD #66 ‘Boundaries Without Barriers’ February to April 2016
- Russell, B (ED.). (2012). Erewhon Calling: Experimental Sound in New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Audio Foundation and CMR
Arts Management
- 2014 – today Uniform
- 2019-today Musical Electronics Library Board of Governance
- 2017-today RM gallery supervision
- 2010-2013 Audio Foundation Board of Governance
- 2010 Wellington Zinefest Committee
- 2008- 2010 Curator ARI Spacething Social Space/Gallery
- 2003-2005 None Gallery ARI studio co-ordinator
Associated Labels & Discography
Root Don Lonie For Cash, Altered State Tapes, Soft Abuse, Dubbed Tapes, Heavy Space Records, Feeding Tube Records
https://www.discogs.com/artist/522063-The-Futurians
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1245557-Beth-Dawson

Press
FELT TIPS AND FLOATING CATS: Ducklingmonster live at the Audio Foundation
2pm, Saturday 12th July
Soundbleed Journal Review by Maryann Savage
On a grim winter Saturday afternoon, nine or ten audience members sat at the back of the gallery in the Audio Foundation to see Ducklingmonster’s solo set. The room was dimmed with a thin blind over the windows because of the overhead projection on the side wall, so the atmosphere in the basement was cosy and cave-like. We sat on cushions on the floor.
Ducklingmonster hunched over her table of keyboards and effects, her long hair falling forward, hiding her face. She played the role at that moment of the stereotypical dark DJ: the guy from Crystal Castles, stooped under his hoodie, the brooding mastermind. But at other times, Ducklingmonster would step forward, look straight ahead, and dance and sing. She was both the glamorous frontwoman and the sullen ‘genius’, everything at once.
When she looked up to sing, Ducklingmonster’s long high pitched yells about neon and the radio were repeated through layers of echo. She put her two keyboards and her drum machine through multiple effects, playing simple squeaky keyboard melodies over a bed of feedback. The drone under Ducklingmonster’s music isn’t warm fuzz: it’s sharp and harsh. She explained later that this bass drone sound, which she loves, comes from her broken casio keyboard’s ‘distorted gating’.
Towards the end of the performance, Tina Pihema (The Coolies) joined Ducklingmonster to play dirgy floor tom and snare. Underneath Ducklingmonster’s gothic, minor 3-note keyboard melodies their performance together sounded like a funeral march, slow and relentless.
And that’s appropriate, because Ducklingmonster isn’t trying to be nice. The overhead projector showed a transparency of a collage Ducklingmonster had made. In it, a 1950s comic-style image of a woman in a polka dot dress was juxtaposed with a magnification of DNA. Over the top of the woman, Ducklingmonster had drawn blocks of colour in harshly filled-out felt tip. The combination of comics and felt tips exemplifies the aesthetic that informs Ducklingmonster’s work. Her performance incorporates cheap drawing technologies, an old overhead projector, casio keyboards, raw 808 style beats, cheap mikes, and 70’s airbrushed pictures of sultry women’s faces floating in the sky next to the faces of cats. This is the aesthetic of the majority: the aesthetic that says no to the cliches of performance art, that celebrates the ‘lowbrow’ forms of raw punk and hip hop, the aesthetic that’s consciously or unconsciously political in its effect. Only the previous night, at the upmarket contemporary gallery Artspace, just along the road, a vapid performance had involved a pretty girl dancing naked, pleasingly, to New Age music, in front of a fashionably dressed crowd. Ducklingmonster’s performance didn’t try to please the audience with soothing vapidity. There were no gallery concessions in the choice of felt tips over paint, or yells and screams over nudity. Ducklingmonster invited us to participate in her underground power.

Listen To Ducklingmonster’s Album ‘Parts Of The Flower’
Chris Cudby for Under The Radar
Friday 15th March, 2019
Auckland-based electronic innovator Ducklingmonster, co-founder of legendary Dunedin noiseniks The Futurians, has re-emerged from her sonic science lab with a seven track album of collaged live recordings titled Parts Of The Flower. Distorted mirrorball-decorated keys take a life of their own on the new collection, marching in robotic rhythm with mutagenic DIY electronic pulses, caveperson-in-the-future doofing tekno beats, and deeply echoed witch-in-the-club vox. One of the super city’s finest live performers, you can catch the multimedia artist doing her thing this Saturday 16th March at the Audio Foundation with Meung x Longmore and Vow Cave, and at Waiheke Island’s Malone’s Pub on Friday 22nd March with Kraus and DJ De Meath. Ducklingmonster explains Parts Of The Flower is “a tape collage of live recordings of performances and field recordings capturing breaking gear and various yelps. For all my green gals”. https://www.undertheradar.co.nz/news/15640/Listen-To-Ducklingmonsters-Album-Parts-Of-The-Flower.utr