WAGGA SPACE PROGRAM UNSOUND04

Gary has been performing improvised music for over a decade. He has performed as a soloist, and in collaboration with various improvisors including Jim Denley, Adam Simmonds, Rik Rue, Oren Ambarchi, Greg Kingston and Tom Fitzgerald. His interest in extending the range of the guitar has led to him rubbing pizza into the strings, throwing a guitar from a 3rd storey window, nailing a guitar to a cross, and writing a PhD thesis on prepared instruments. More recently Gary has been performing with his entire family - The Von Crapp Family is his answer to Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music. The Age reviewed the Von Krapp's performance at the What Is Music? festival in Melbourne:
". . . the night belonged to the Von Crapp Family. Gary Butler, whose business card states his profession as "guitar, toys and stupidity" plays his guitar with all sorts of found objects such as egg beaters, chopsticks, radios, ping-pong balls, twigs, toothbrushes, socks and files. . . .For the finale, Butler hacked apart a guitar with a pickaxe. "He may have looked like a serial killer, but this was about controlled chaos."
For Mutable Landscapes, Gary intends to build a collection of punk windchimes and random noisemakers, which can be used to accompany a performance of "guitar, toys and stupidity" .

mutable landscapes artist statement