Sunday 21 May, 11 – 5pm
‘Proximity’ is a six hour performance event organised to coincide with the Inner West Open Studio Tour. ‘Proximity’ explores concepts of nearness or closeness in time, space and relationship through the medium of performance art. The event will consist of multiple performances taking place simultaneously throughout the space. The audience is invited to consider the interrelationships between performances as well as their own proximity to the works.
The Artists
Kate Brown
Kate Brown is an Australian based artist and vocalist working across mediums, spanning performance, sound and installation. Kate is a currently focusing on experimental performance and voice in relation to collective conscious, Participation Mystique and ritual. Her research sits within the exploration of specifically identifying how human voice sits in a body, how it is used and practiced to produce sound, and projected out to be placed elsewhere.
Bonnie Cowan
Drawing on personal interactions, Bonnie plays at the intersection of performance and human connection. As a 2015 graduate from the University of Wollongong’s theatre course, her recent performance credits include the PACT’s Vacant Room residency (2017), Desire Lines (2017), iDNA (PACT Collective, 2016), unspoken (107 Projects 2016), 1625 Rings (Annandale Creative Arts Centre, 2016) and unravelling (You Are Here, 2016).
Jane Grimley
Jane makes performance across theatre and live art. She is predominantly a collaborative artist, and is the lead artist of The Deconverters. Often participatory and playful her work provokes action from an audience. In 2016 Jane was invited to perform an iteration of her one to one performance 7 at MKA’s Hot!Hot!Hot! Climate responsive festival. 7 is an intimate experiment that stems from her recent major work Emergency Crash Landing. Shown at MetroArts, and developed on site at a coal mine blockade camp, this work inspired Jane to press further into socially and politically charged artmaking. She currently works as a teaching artist for Shopfront Contemporary Arts and Performance and The Sydney Opera House, devising contemporary performance works with young artists.
Tom Isaacs
Tom Isaacs (b. 1985, Oxford, UK) is a Sydney-based performance artist and sculptor. In 2008, he completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney. Isaacs returned to SCA in 2015, enrolling in a PhD researching the connection between ritual and body art. His artistic practice is an exploration of the relationship between art and catharsis, informed by his research into body art, psychoanalytical theory and religious or spiritual traditions. Read more about Tom here.
Katya Petetskaya
Katya Petetskaya is an interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in performance and painting. In her work, Katya attempts correlationist experiments with alternative forms of knowledge that go beyond thought to understand the co-relation between body and reality. Her performance work was presented in Australia, Greece and Italy. http://ekatsky.tumblr.com
Alan Schacher
Alan Schacher is a performance-maker, employing improvisation and devising methods as key skills in collaborations. He has backgrounds in both dance and visual arts and directs, choreographs and designs. Founder of Performance Companies Gravity Feed (1992-2004) and Gravity Research Institute (2000-ongoing), his current interests are in diaspora as a global condition, in architectural experience, and in the performativity of public space. His work is visceral and its motifs and undercurrents are drawn from cultural landscapes and diasporic references, both imagined and inherited.
He enacts performance art solo works, and duets with WeiZen Ho, in which they examine cross-cultural themes, misunderstandings and inheritances through their respective spiritual and racial archetypes.
Scott Sinclair & Emily Walder
Scott Sinclair and Emily Walder have been creating performance art together since meeting while undertaking studies at the National Art School a number of years ago. Their collaborative work investigates notions of the individual and one’s place in relation to another and their surroundings. Walder and Sinclair’s performances are playful, sometimes awkward, and ultimately an exploration of the human experience.
