Performance Space's 'You're History' Event Featuring Brown Council Q&A
Image: Brown Council
If you live in Sydney, you would have most likely heard of Performance Space, an inter-disciplinary arts organisation that is about to celebrate its 30th birthday. Performance Space will be holding a 12-day 'You're History!' Festival in order to "showcase a series of performances from some of Australia’s most dynamic and thought-provoking artists across multiple mediums."
Performance Spaces explains that it will be featuring "a series of free events including a commemorative film from emerging female four-piece, Brown Council, as well as a kaleidoscope of 30 unique acts, held throughout the duration of the festival in Carriagework’s public forum. Expect to see Rosalind Crisp’s world class international trio of dancers, as well as be mesmerized by Nigel Kellaway’s premiere of his avant-garde theatrical masterpiece, Brief Synopsis." If you're in Sydney, then you will definitely want to check it out!
Whim was lucky enough to have a Q&A with the talented ladies from Brown Council, discussing their love of performance art, their latest project titled 'This is Barbara Cleveland', and what guests at the 12-day Performance Space Festival can expect to see from the Brown Council exhibition:
Q: For those of our readers who are unfamiliar with Brown Council, how would you describe yourselves and the work you do?
A: Brown Council is the collaborative practice of Sydney-based artists Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore, Kelly Doley and Diana Smith. Since 2007 we have made live and mediated performance that draws on the historical lineages of both the visual and performing arts as well as popular forms of entertainment like comedy and slap stick. Our work engages with concepts of tragi-spectacle and endurance, as well as the dialogue between ‘liveness’ and the performance document or trace. We do this as a way to investigate modes of performance, construction and artifice in relation to gender and identity. Recently our work investigates feminist ideas and politics, in particular the relationship contemporary feminism has to the past and the need for inter-generational dialogue.
Q: Please tell us, how did Brown Council form, and where did the idea come from?
A: In 2004 we all met as friends at art school (College of Fine Arts, UNSW) in Sydney and have continued to make work together ever since. Our collaboration came out of Drama Club - the performance society of COFA - who were a larger group making experimental performances for club nights and parties. In 2007 we officially formed Brown Council because we decided as a group of four women coming together making performance we had a lot to say (and still do!).
Q: What is it about visual art performance that you love the most?
A: Performance is the most exciting, provocative, challenging and immediate way to communicate our ideas to audiences. Because we come from a visual arts background we draw on the history of performance art as it offers a rich terrain for us to work with and it is continually interesting to us.
Q: We understand in August you began the Barbara Cleveland Pilgrimage in order to retrace the steps of Barbara Cleveland. Were there any difficulties you have faced along the way, or has it largely been a positive experience?
A: Over the last few months we have been travelling through Europe and developing a new project, This Is Barbara Cleveland, which is a new video work that focuses on the legacy of the mythic Australian performance artist Barbara Cleveland. Cleveland was working predominately in Sydney from the early 1970s up until her untimely death in 1981. Despite her significant output of work she has largely been left out of the canon of performance art, nationally and internationally. Like many Australian artists, Cleveland travelled to the UK, Europe and the USA in the 70s and although she was quite prolific throughout her time abroad, there is little documentation of the work she made during this time. During our time overseas we have been on a type of 'pilgrimage' to unearth some more information about Cleveland. Since August we have been interviewing and meeting with local artists, curators and art historians who are familiar with Barbara Cleveland or that era, as well as presenting performative acts of 'remembrance'. One of these gestures has been handing out t-shirts with the statement "REMEMBERING BARBARA CLEVELAND" printed on the back. The t-shirts enable people to enact their own form of remembrance and spread the name of Barbara Cleveland. Through honoring the life and work of Cleveland through our research and travels, Brown Council seek to question who is written in and out of art history, and how narratives are constructed and re-presented.
Q: What can those attending the Performance Space’s 12 day festival, ‘You’re History!’ expect from your exhibition?
A: People can expect the premier of our new video work, This Is Barbara Cleveland. This new work will not only present a portrait of the life and work of Cleveland, but will be a meditation on performance, history and memory. As one of our largest projects to date, this video seeks to question who is written in and out of art history, and how narratives are constructed and re-presented.
Q: What does the future hold for Brown Council - do you have any exciting, upcoming plans that you would like to tell us about?
A: In 2014 we will continue to make new work, travel together and spread the word of Barbara Cleveland
We highly recommend that you check out Brown Council's website for more information about the talented female foursome, as well as to view some of their amazing work. To view more information about the 12-day 'You're History' event by Performance Space, as well as to buy tickets, you can click here. You can also support Performance Space and keep updated with their latest and greatest events by liking the Performance Space Facebook page - Enjoy!