OF THE TIME
Performance Space is a living, breathing organism of performativity, having birthed and nurtured generations of experimental creativity since its inception. As PSpace turns 40 this year, we reactivate the time machine to consider a history of radical artists, practices and thinking. Liveworks 2023 unpacks the archive to consider the impact of time on art, actions, ideas and the bodies that carry and move culture forward.
Over 40 years PSpace has reflected and responded to the times, acting as a beacon of artistic risk and experimentation during a hurtling era of great cultural, political, social and technological change. To celebrate and acknowledge the significant influence PSpace has had on the national cultural ecology, we have visioned a program that reflects an unwavering commitment to supporting work that has forged the future of contemporary practice.
By looking to the future through the lens of the recent past, our anniversary program, OF THE TIME, surveys the communities, collectives, shapeshifters and storytellers who form the beating heart of PSpace, through a curated mix of work, old and new.
OF THE TIME proudly presents bold new works by Rainbow Chan 陳雋然, Brooke Stamp, and Latai Taumoepeau and Rosanna Raymond. Significant and well-loved umbrella programs of the past—Antistatic, cLUB bENT, and Nighttime, have been reborn in the present with a dynamic mix of legendary archival works remounted and revisioned alongside next-gen artists and ideas. PSpace’s commitment to the moving image is honoured with a return of archival ReelDance works and a video art survey, Channels and Spells—taking cues from a popular exhibition series of the past called Video Spell.
Thanks to Martin del Amo, Victoria Spence, Groovii Biscuit, Lara Thoms, Erin Brannigan, Siobhan Murphy, Feras Shaheen and Gitta Wigro for contributing their critical archival eye as co-curators of these programs and distilling them into a collective vision for Liveworks 2023. Artist Elvis Richardson transforms the towering walls of the Carriageworks’ Public Space into a work that reviews, remixes and reimagines the PSpace archive as a backdrop for the grand reunion. Heidrun Löhr’s Proof draws on her archive of more than 300,000 photographs from the PSpace archive for a largescale work celebrating her role in documenting the time. Other program highlights include Crime Writers ... criminal intent by the Opera Project Inc featuring a cast of incredible female performers, and Barbara Campbell’s Night 1001—a revisitation of the final evening of her epic durational work 1001 nights cast (2005-08).
And while OF THE TIME reflects on the past 40 years of PSpace, we hope the program catalyses and ignites conversations about the next 40 years of this organisation so many artists and audiences have called home.
Rosie Dennis & Daniel Mudie Cunningham
Performance Space is a living, breathing organism of performativity, having birthed and nurtured generations of experimental creativity since its inception. As PSpace turns 40 this year, we reactivate the time machine to consider a history of radical artists, practices and thinking. Liveworks 2023 unpacks the archive to consider the impact of time on art, actions, ideas and the bodies that carry and move culture forward.
Over 40 years PSpace has reflected and responded to the times, acting as a beacon of artistic risk and experimentation during a hurtling era of great cultural, political, social and technological change. To celebrate and acknowledge the significant influence PSpace has had on the national cultural ecology, we have visioned a program that reflects an unwavering commitment to supporting work that has forged the future of contemporary practice.
By looking to the future through the lens of the recent past, our anniversary program, OF THE TIME, surveys the communities, collectives, shapeshifters and storytellers who form the beating heart of PSpace, through a curated mix of work, old and new.
OF THE TIME proudly presents bold new works by Rainbow Chan 陳雋然, Brooke Stamp, and Latai Taumoepeau and Rosanna Raymond. Significant and well-loved umbrella programs of the past—Antistatic, cLUB bENT, and Nighttime, have been reborn in the present with a dynamic mix of legendary archival works remounted and revisioned alongside next-gen artists and ideas. PSpace’s commitment to the moving image is honoured with a return of archival ReelDance works and a video art survey, Channels and Spells—taking cues from a popular exhibition series of the past called Video Spell.
Thanks to Martin del Amo, Victoria Spence, Groovii Biscuit, Lara Thoms, Erin Brannigan, Siobhan Murphy, Feras Shaheen and Gitta Wigro for contributing their critical archival eye as co-curators of these programs and distilling them into a collective vision for Liveworks 2023. Artist Elvis Richardson transforms the towering walls of the Carriageworks’ Public Space into a work that reviews, remixes and reimagines the PSpace archive as a backdrop for the grand reunion. Heidrun Löhr’s Proof draws on her archive of more than 300,000 photographs from the PSpace archive for a largescale work celebrating her role in documenting the time. Other program highlights include Crime Writers ... criminal intent by the Opera Project Inc featuring a cast of incredible female performers, and Barbara Campbell’s Night 1001—a revisitation of the final evening of her epic durational work 1001 nights cast (2005-08).
And while OF THE TIME reflects on the past 40 years of PSpace, we hope the program catalyses and ignites conversations about the next 40 years of this organisation so many artists and audiences have called home.
Rosie Dennis & Daniel Mudie Cunningham
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