Lightening Field
Photographer: Naomi O'Reilly
Lightening Field
BARI (Brisbane Artist Run Initiative) Festival | Warehouse, Teneriffe, Brisbane, Australia
7pm - 10pm, Wednesday 19 October 2016
BODY-SONIC-DRAWING
PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENT
KELLIE O’DEMPSEY
MEGAN JANET WHITE
LUKE JAANISTE
Lightening Field brings together, for the first time, the diverse and fluctuating practices of performance drawer Kellie O’Dempsey, installation butoh artist Megan Janet White and sonic artist Luke Jaaniste in a new collaborative work.
The Laundry Artspace is proud to present the premiere performance of LIGHTENING FIELD as part of BARI Festival, within a dishevelled warehouse space in Teneriffe amongst the grime of disused floors, the grift of recent graffiti, and the darkness of night.
Kellie O’Dempsey’s drawing practice is hybrid and diverse, incorporating projection, video, collage, architectural space, gestural line, site-specific installation and live art, through which she explores transformational processes through improvisation and happenstance. The performance drawing works invite the audience to engage directly with the visceral process of making. O’Dempsey’s public and private productions aim to enable an inclusive form of cultural interaction via performance and play.
Megan Janet White and Luke Jaaniste are the co-directors of Brisbane-based ensemble Theatre of Thunder. TOT intertwines butoh dance with immersive sound and atmospheric landscape. Raw and ambient sounds propel the body into a state of poetic rupture and transmutation, whilst illuminated smoke-bubble storms make palpable the fluid dynamic between the sound, body, architecture and audience.
This trio of Brisbane artists has half a century of practice between them and have been featured in major festivals, exhibitions and workshops across Australia and overseas, including Asia Pacific Triennial QAGOMA, Museum of Contemporary Art, White Night Melbourne, MONA FOMO, Draw to Perform Symposium London, dLux, Art After Dark 18 Biennale of Sydney, Prague Quadrennial of Performance and Design, Perspectives on Hijikata Research Collective Japan and hosting international butoh master Kan Katsura.
Links | Catalogue
Credit: Photographs - Aishla Manning & Naomi O'Reilly
Live Performance – NRC
Live Performance – NRC
NRC Silver Jubilee Event | Northern Rivers Conservatorium of Music, Lismore NSW, Commissioned by the Lismore Regional Gallery
15 October 2016
A creative development & presentation program celebrating the Northern Rivers Conservatorium Silver Jubilee and the stories connected to its historic building.
NRC alumni & teachers, local musicians and community with guest conductor Richard Gill and visual artist Kellie O’Dempsey (presented by Lismore Regional Gallery) exhibited a major multi-artform performance in the grounds of the Northern Rivers Conservatorium from 13 – 15 October 2016. The building, which houses the Northern Rivers Conservatorium, has been in educational use for over 100 years and has great significance to generations of Lismore families.
NRC Silver Jubilee partnered with RealArtWorks “The Building(s) Still Lives” to present The Homecoming, providing an opportunity for the whole community to participate in a free multi-artform event that is about their stories.
Credit | Photographer: Natsky
Just Draw – Bathurst
Just Draw | Group Exhibition
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
19 August – 2 October 2016
Opening night performance: 19 August
Curators: Todd Fuller and Lisa Woolfe
Just Draw celebrates drawing and its many possibilities; performance, multimedia, installation, sculpture, kinetics and robotics. Exhibition curators Todd Fuller and Lisa Woolfe present Australian artists who leverage the possibilities of this deceptively simple medium.
Artists include Connie Anthes, Flatline, Hannah Bertram, John Bokor, Matilda Michell, Kelly O’Dempsey, Catherine O’Donnell, Hannah Quinlivan, Jeremy Smith, Jack Stahel, Grant Stewart, Jane Théau and Paul White.
Photographer · Todd Fuller
unSeen (confined space)
unSeen (confined space)
Metro Arts, Professional Development Residency, Brisbane
21 – 27 March 2016
Artists: Sarah Houbolt, Kellie O’Dempsey and Michael Dick
unSeen (confined space) is a project in development filmed at Metro Arts, Brisbane. unSeen is a sensory game of call and response exploring perception and the disparate. Using drawn lines, body gestures, digital projection and sound design, this live gesamtkunstwerk or total artwork starts a feedback loop that informs an unwritten script as the artists unite with each other without utilising verbal communication. Together they interrogate the public and the private, and what is seen and unseen within a small space.
Photograoher and videographer • Fiarrah Poole
TAPE on
TAPE on: a temporal collision of line
Griffith University Art Museum | Brisbane
24 February 2016
Artists: Vanghoua Anthony Vue and Kellie O’Dempsey
Interactive performance with the possibility of play.
In collaboration with Vanghoua Anthony Vue, TAPE on: a temporal collision of line is an interactive performance work that integrates the gestural and geometric. Informed by traditional drawing methods, O’Dempsey’s performance drawings respond to movement, and the body in an immediate environment. Vue draws on popular culture, street art, the everyday, DIY ethic, and brings aspects of his Hmong heritage into a contemporary art context. Together these two artists will collide in a conversation through line.
Photographer and videographer • Vanghoua Anthony Vue
A Line in the Night
Photographer: Anna Hill
A Line in the Night (performance) as a part of Just Draw (exhibition)
Newcastle Art Gallery
6 February – 1 May 2016
Featuring the live drawing performance A Line in the Night, from 8.00pm, Newcastle Art Gallery will become the canvas for artist Kellie O’Dempsey and musician Mick Dick to collaborate and respond to sound and the immediate environment. In a live performance O’Dempsey will use light and colour to create a new digital drawing work.
Just Draw celebrates drawing and its many possibilities, performance, multimedia, installation, sculpture, kinetics and robotics. This exhibition presents Australian artists who leverage the possibilities of this deceptively simple medium.
Australian drawing is alive with dynamic interrogations of its own parameters. It is an enduring medium with a fierce versatility, a medium of democracy, that is easily accessible in both materials and actions.
Drawing offers a conceptual wonderland, allowing the practitioner to meander through a broad spectrum of ideas and concepts. From artists whose work could be described as a contemporary take on a classical methodology, to those who nudge the definition of ‘drawing’ beyond the realm of ‘marks on paper’. This survey considers artists' works which are so much more than just drawing.
Guest curators: Todd Fuller and Lisa Woolfe
Exhibiting Artists: Connie Anthes, Hannah Bertram, John Bokor, Flatline, Todd Fuller, Matilda Michell, Kellie O’Dempsey, Catherine O’Donnell, Hannah Quinlivan, Jack Stahel, Grant Stewart, Jeremy Smith, Jane Theau, Paul White, Lisa Woolfe
With thanks to the support of project partners:
Newcastle Art Gallery, Bathurst Regional Gallery, Faculty and Students of The University of Newcastle School of Creative Arts, Watt Space Gallery, The Backyard Bus Artist Residency, Newcastle Now, Newcastle Council, NAVA National Association of the Visual Arts The Australian Artists’ Grant is a NAVA initiative, made possible through the generous sponsorship of Mrs Janet Holmes à Court and the support of the Visual Arts Board, Australia Council for the Arts.
Links | Newcastle Art Gallery // Exhibition essays
Credits | Photographer: Anna Hill
Before I leave (silent)
Before I Leave (silent)
POP (Post Graduate and other projects) Gallery, | Woolloongabba, Brisbane
16 January 2016
A drawing conversation by Piyali Ghosh (India) and Kellie O’Dempsey (Australia)
Sound by Mick Dick (Australia)
An improvised drawing performance for one night only.
Presented by Griffith Centre for Creative Arts Research & Woolloongabba Art Gallery
Photographer and Videographer • Emma Wright
Bomb the Wall
Bomb the Wall
Queensland College of Art
Friday October 2, 2015
KELLIE O’DEMPSEY + FLATLINE (TODD FULLER AND CARL SCIBBERAS)
Visual artist Todd and dancer and choreographer Carl Scibberas in collaboration with Kellie O’Dempsey. Bomb the Wall of the Griffith Galleries for the closing of Drawing International Brisbane 2015.
Photographer • Lisa Kurtz
Under Arena - Drawing International Brisbane
Under Arena
Exhibition at Spring Hills Reservoir as a part of the Drawing International Brisbane (DIB) Symposium 2015: Ego Artefact, Arena
Spring Hill Reservoirs | Brisbane, QLD
30 September, 2015
Artists: Kellie O’Dempsey | Bill Platz | Zoe Porter | Flatline (Todd Fuller And Carl Sciberras) | Velvet Persu
A group of artists engage with performance and drawing to respond to a unique Brisbane landmark. The subterranean Spring Hill Reservoirs and the Old Windmill present a theatrical environment in which live drawing, sound, video and dance coalesce.
Kellie O'Dempsey and Michael Dick, installation view of Under Arena 2015. Photographer Matthew Loyd
Kellie O’Dempsey: Artist + Curator of the performance art event Under Arena. Opening the Drawing International Brisbane Symposium 2015, Under Arena was an initiative of the Griffith Centre For Creative Arts Research.
Under the auspices of Griffith University, Queensland College of Art through the assistance of The National Trust and Brisbane City Council, Under Arena was representative of the artistic interdisciplinary dialects involved in the creation of a lexicon of contemporary performative practice. Michael Dick: Sound artist working in direct response to the action of Kellie O’Dempsey. Michael provides the synaesthetic vehicle from which the art work resonates toward a palpable liminality. You may also notice throughout the soundscape the vocals of performance artist Velvet Pesu.
Taking place on the 30 September 2015 at the historic Spring Hill Reservoir, this conveyance is a subjectively inflected inference of the artistic intent of Kellie O'Dempsey and Mick Dick.
Exhibition images – installation view:
Documentation: Emma Wright, Simon Marsh, Matthew Loyd
Drawn to Experience V2
Drawn to Experience V2
Artists: Gosia Wlodarczak (VIC/Poland), Entang Wiharso (Indonesia), Flatline (NSW), Hannah Quinlivan (ACT), Jaanika Peerna (Estonia/NY), Mar Serinya (Spain), Lugas Syllabus + M.A. Roziq (Indonesia), Robert Andrew (QLD), Nicci Haynes (ACT), Bill Platz (QLD), Kevin Townsend (USA), Jodi Woodward (NSW), Benjamin Sheppard (VIC), Piyali Ghosh (India), Kellie O’Dempsey (QLD)
Curated by Kellie O’Dempsey
QCA Galleries
POP Gallery | 27 Logan Road, Woolloongabba
22 September – 3 October 2015
ANU
ANU School of Art Main Gallery, ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
9 – 31 October 2015
Exhibition catalogue can be found here.
This survey explored the expansive act of performance drawing—the act and action of drawing, its processes as theatre, line, motion and record, positioning drawing within an interdisciplinary platform. The group exhibition consisted of works on paper, digital drawings, video and a live drawing performance. In conjunction with the Drawing International Brisbane (DIB) Symposium (papers from DIB can be found here).. Drawn to Experience V2 also toured to the ANU Gallery, Canberra.
Gosia Wlodarczak, A Room Without A View — drawing performance Day 5, 2013, a 17-day drawing performance held in a specially constructed sensory limitation room at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne. Pigment pen, polymer paint on MDF board, space dimensions: 260 x 340 x 220 cm. Photographer Longin Sarnecki. Image courtesy the artist and Fehily Contemporary, Helen Maxwell and BOXOProjects New York/Joshua Tree
Photographer (exhibition): Kellie O'Dempsey
Bald, Bald Head and Other Stories
Bald, Bald Head and Other Stories
The Hold Artspace
27 May – 6 June 2015
Bald, Bald, Head and other stories explores the mythical and romantic relationship between the artist, studio and the muse. Investigating the notions of the public and the private. Kellie O'Dempsey and sound designer Mick Dick will transform and manipulate the gallery space through a playful installation of drawing, video and performance.
Photographer
uNatural
uNatural
Art Forum, Visiting Artist, Drawing and Print Media Department, School of Art
Print Media and seminar room | Australian National University, Canberra
26 March 2015
Kellie O’Dempsey + Jaanika Peerna (Estonia/NY)
Collaborative drawing performance at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 2015.
Jaanika Peerna: movement drawings by hand.
Kellie O’Dempsey: drawing and digital via projections (light drawings) that would draw on existing spaces between the works, connecting them in response to Jaanika’s performance.
Collaborating through performance drawing, Jaanika Peerna (Estonia/NY) and Kellie O’Dempsey (Australia) exchange directives like weather patterns; lines build and change embodying a shared experience. This international collaboration connects directly in the expanding fields of live drawing. Jaanika describes her force as connected to nature, the natural phenomena of the self. Where Kellie work is site-generated, responding directly to Jaanika’s performance and the space via the ephemeral light drawings that build, move and disappear.
Photographers • Kellie O’Dempsey and Jaanika Peerna
Draw to Perform 2 – London
Draw to Perform 2
Number 3 Performance space | Deptford, London, UK
16 – 17 March 2015
Artists: Gerald Royston Curtis (UK), dolanbay (Berlin), Poppy Jackson (UK), Ram Samocha (Israel/ UK), Yara Pina (Brazil), Jordan Mckenzie (UK), Bettina Fung (Hong Kong/UK), Kevin Townsend (USA), Kellie O’Dempsey (Australia), Bertrand Flachot (France), Jennifer Wroblewski (USA), Holly Matthews (UK), Shoshanah Ciechanowski (Israel), John Court (UK/Finland), River Lin (Taiwan), Gosia Wlodarczak (Poland/Australia), Rachel Grant (Scotland/UK).
Draw to Perform 2 was a collective live drawing installation event in London, independently curated by artist Ram Samocha. International artists presented works using conventional drawing tools—pencils, charcoal, and markers—and unconventional digital prints, experimental mark making methods, and labouring tools, including Polyfilla and plumber’s twine. The nature of these materials determined how the artist acted, moved, and performed in the space. Concurrently performing drawings for six continuous hours, the twelve artists (including Kellie O’Dempsey) used diverse strategies in accordance with their own practice, working within self-determined parameters in separate areas of a warehouse.
The space was open to the public as a live durational time-based performance. The audience could wander through or participate in (some) works according to their desire and interest. As witnesses, the audience activated the space, which made them participants in the event. The space or site of a performance drawing can inform the work. The Draw to Perform 2 venue was a warehouse in South London. It was a coId, hard, dark concrete building in an inner-city industrial area. The location can also invariably affect and establish how the performance drawing is read.
Kellie’s own performance drawings at the event were a direct response to the space and those who occupied it during the six hours. The installation or configuration of her setup was designed according to the architectural features of the corner she inhabited. Using materials gathered from the local hardware and art shop, digital projections, and black tape, the images traversed two walls and the floor. She drew both the moving gestures of the audience and the other artists that could be seen from her space, constantly swapping materials from traditional means to live digital drawing and animation in an attempt to respond to the mechanics of the environment. She drew River Lin as he moved through his floured surface; she drew the viewers who passed by and those who stayed; She attempted to draw the ever changing now. As people moved, the drawing was altered, producing an evolving observational tableau.
Video https://drawtoperform.com/draw-to-perform-page/draw-to-perform2/videos/
Draw to Perform 2 website
Other artists performances
Photographer · Marco Berardi
Draw/Delay – White Night Festival Melbourne
Draw/Delay • White Night Festival Melbourne 2015
Caledonian Lane | Melbourne CBD
7pm — 7am, February 2015
Artists: Kellie O’Dempsey and Mick Dick
Draw/Delay is a performance drawing and sound installation which reveals the workings of art-making as both a public and private event. Through live drawing and seductive audio manipulation, the romantic notion or myth of the artist in the studio is exposed.
An improvised collaboration with musician Mick Dick, artist Kellie O’Dempsey responds directly to sound and the immediate environment with live performance, marks on paper and digital drawing. Along with video and audio installation, the audience are invited to engage directly with the visceral process of creating. O’Dempsey investigates the uncanny, aiming to enable a playful and inclusive form of interaction.
PRESS
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
White Night Melbourne 2015: Up all night for dusk till dawn party
February 22, 2015
Cameron Woodhead
Almost every alleyway held a niche event – some trash, some treasure. The best of them was Kelly O’Dempsey and Mick Dick’s Draw/Delay – a beautiful fusion of live drawing, digital art and music that exposed the creative process to a public, and participatory, gaze.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
White Night Melbourne 2015: The best of an all-night spectacle
Debbie Cuthbertson
February 21, 2015
A small scale highlight of
the night came from a live art and music collaboration between digital sound man Mick Dick and painter Kellie Dempsey. Taking place on Caledonian Lane with milk crates for seats, the show was aimed at exposing the process of making art. Dempsey delivered in spades using both a projected e-tablet along along with angular and deft brushstrokes on the canvas. Dick’s soundtrack was suitably mesmerising.
Read more...
TWITTER
Experiencing Draw/delay at Caledonian Lane
Katherine Lim
RED AND BLACK ARCHITECT (online magazine)
Draw/Delay saw traditional drawing artwork collide with multimedia to create a performance piece. This event explored the artistic methods of drawing as a performance piece. The collaboration between artist Kellie O’Dempsey and musician Mick Dick, was an action collage with sketches on paper projected on to a wall merged with simultaneous paint brushed directly upon the ‘canvas’, all set to a moody soundtrack. The live nature of this event showcased the creative process of the artist rather than just the ‘finished product’ making it an ideal inclusion in the White Night programme.
Read more...
Photographers · Georgina Tait
Corner Dance Lab
The Corner Dance Lab
Jasper Corner Federal | NSW
24 January 2015
A week-long collaboration between Philip Channells (Dance Integrated Australia) and Gavin Webber (The Farm). They were involved in a consolidated week of working with 10 renowned teachers sharing daily routines, practice, ideas and experiments with emerging and established dancers and choreographers.
Kellie O’Dempsey working in collaboration with Visual Artist Musician Ben Ely.
Classes are led by Phil Blackman, Philip Channells, Hsin-Ju Chiu (Raw), Kate Harman, Lee-Anne Litton, Grayson Millwood, Kimberly McIntyre, Timothy Ohl, Laurie Young and Gavin Webber.
Photographer: Veda Dante
Falls Festival 2014
THE KELLIEO COLLECTIVE
Falls Festival | Byron Bay
December 2014
Art Camp at Falls Festival 2014 Kellie O’Dempsey–with collaborating campers–developed, painted and installed 100 metres of crazy hand gestures gripping a long black line on hessian. This massive painting/fencing surrounded the Falls Art village.
JADA Performance
JADA (Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award) Drawing Symposium
Grafton Regional Gallery | NSW
Saturday 18 — Sunday 19 October 2014
Artists: Todd Fuller, Kellie O’Dempsey and Mick Dick
Drawing takes new forms in the digital age. Brisbane based Kellie O’Demspey and Sydney based Todd Fuller unite for a live drawing performance. Merging digital drawing through the tag-tool application, with traditional drawing and animation; the pair generate a multi-layered 4 dimensional ephemeral artwork.
Sound by Mick Dick.
Photographer: Todd Fuller
Dis/close
Dis/close
Kellie O’Dempsey
2014 | Digital video | 4:23 minutes (performance photographs)
This work aims to discuss the relationship between the individual and the constant manipulation of facts by the media and governing political powers, which appear to conceal and blindfold the populace. In silence, through a game of reveal and conceal, the environment and the appearance of an individual is transformed through digital drawing that exposes the head of a man in disquiet and contemplation. The hand drawn, pixelated lines consistently uncover, redefine and blur what is actually available to us. Through the process of drawing as enquiry, Dis/close identifies and investigates the interconnected experience of human engagement. The use of the Tagtool (live digital drawing and animation device) aims to translate those elements into a drawn video work that allows an authentic process of collaboration and improvisation. The outcome, a strange, poetic intervention of the digital drawing that uncovers, confuses and transforms an isolated man.
Describing her work as a Performance Drawing practice, O’Dempsey aims to enable an inclusive form of cultural interaction via interdisciplinary performance and play. Hybrid in form, O’Dempsey’s practice incorporates projection, video, collage, architecture, gestural line and digital drawing. Investigating notions of transformation and the uncanny, she collaborates with performers combining hand drawn marks with digital projection and live animation. Experimental and emergent, O’Dempsey invites the audience to engage directly with the visceral process of making.
Photographer and Videographer: Kris Garner
IS THIS ART? V2
IS THIS ART? V2
Artreal Gallery | NSW
6 August 2014 | from 6-8pm
Presented by dLux MediaArts in association with Artereal Gallery
Artereal Gallery and dLux MediaArts are proud to present the Second Screening of IS THIS ART? – a quarterly screening program of moving image works, curated by Rhys Votano of dLux MediaArts.
This program will link art audiences with exciting new works by emerging creative practitioners and will incorporate video artworks by established contemporary artists from the Artereal stable. Audiences will benefit from an opportunity to revisit well-known and new works by established contemporary Australian video artists, as well as discover the latest works by emerging practitioners.
Artists: David Asher Brook, Em Hicks, Kellie O’Dempsey, Shoufay Drez, Shivanjani Lal, Nina Ross, Kieran Gilfeather, Brigette Lucas, Grant Stewart, David Greenhalgh, Miniature Malekpour
Dis/close
Kellie O’Dempsey
2014 | Digital video | 4:23 minutes (performance photograph)
This work aims to discuss the relationship between the individual and the constant manipulation of facts by the media and governing political powers, which appear to conceal and blindfold the populace. In silence, through a game of reveal and conceal, the environment and the appearance of an individual is transformed through digital drawing that exposes the head of a man in disquiet and contemplation. The hand drawn, pixelated lines consistently uncover, redefine and blur what is actually available to us. Through the process of drawing as enquiry, Dis/close identifies and investigates the interconnected experience of human engagement. The use of the Tagtool (live digital drawing and animation device) aims to translate those elements into a drawn video work that allows an authentic process of collaboration and improvisation. The outcome, a strange, poetic intervention of the digital drawing that uncovers, confuses and transforms an isolated man.
Describing her work as a Performance Drawing practice, O’Dempsey aims to enable an inclusive form of cultural interaction via interdisciplinary performance and play. Hybrid in form, O’Dempsey’s practice incorporates projection, video, collage, architecture, gestural line and digital drawing. Investigating notions of transformation and the uncanny, she collaborates with performers combining hand drawn marks with digital projection and live animation. Experimental and emergent, O’Dempsey invites the audience to engage directly with the visceral process of making.
Photographer and Videographer: Kris Garner
Responsive Performance - Hawksbury Regional Gallery
Responsive Performance for 'A General Map of Caves' - Hawksbury Regional Gallery
Hawksbury Regional Gallery
13 June 2014
Live site-specific performance of drawing, dance, sound & projection by Kellie O'Dempsey and Tanya Voges in response to the current exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, 'A General Map of Caves'.
Photographers and Videographers: Kellie O'Dempsey and Tanya Voges