Art — Kellie O'Dempsey

away and towards
Valley Metro Shopping Centre, Fortitude Valley | Brisbane, Australia
6 – 7.30pm, 5 October 2017
Kellie O’Dempsey | Sound: Michael Dick | Performers: Marisa Georgiou and Saara Rappola

away and towards is a collaborative exchange between Kellie O’Dempsey, Michael Dick, Marisa Georgiou and Saara Rappola.

This work is an evolving and fluid encounter that signifies the culmination of a research enquiry into performance drawing as a hybrid and cooperative practice.

The notion of arriving in the present is explored through the use of light, sound, movement and space.

Converging at the intersection of the live event and improvisational exchange, away and towards searches for a destination that is always here.

Performance

Photographers: Robyn Mill and Andy Willis | Videographer: Andy Willis

Resistance Movement
Kentler International Drawing Space | Brooklyn, New York
January 15 – February 19 2017
Performance + Opening Reception: Sunday, January 15, 4 – 7pm with sounds by guests
Artists’ Talk and final performance: Saturday, January 28, 4pm with musical guest M.A.N.I.A.C. Empire
Ben Gerstein: Trombone | Mike Pride: Percussion | Jonathan Moritz: Saxophone

Kellie O’Dempsey (AUS) and Jennifer Wroblewski (NJ) re-imagine the gallery as a dance hall and a gathering area where pleasure through movement is the only goal, and where the democratic practice of social dance renders all who enter equal and allied.

Resistance Movement aims to enable a shared experience. Together, artists and audience will come to witness an evolving work of light, surface and mark. Marks will be analog and digital, made on paper, and projected into the space. We will respond to music, sound, and one another. Performing a dialogue of drawing and sound in an organised and considered improvisational environment, lines and form will move on, over and through opaque and transparent surfaces. The artists will move around and with the audience, in a drawn game of call and response. Drawing as a record of human movement.

What will remain will be a mapping of performance and cultural exchange. For those present in this Gesamtkunstwerk or whole artwork, they participate in an unfolding collaboration that is both experiential and inclusive.

Resistance Movement is a 2017 rejoinder to the 1970’s Discotheque, the Cabaret/Kabarett of France and Germany prior to WWII–the rave culture of the 1990s. Underground gathering in all of its forms. Dance as protest. The dance hall as a safe haven.

Drawing is the outcome of the friction of the mark-making element on the surface. Resistance and movement are the requirements of the mark.

Links | Resistance Movement catalogue with essay by Charlotta Kotik