Contemporary Australia: Women

183 Lauren Brincat Australia b.1980 High horse (still, detail) 2012 Video projection full HD (looped), 16:9, colour, sound, timber framed pyramids, tambourines Installed dimensions variable (KM): Histories are important to acknowledge and it’s important to understand the lineage of your practice. I generally think of myself as a human making work, not ‘I am a woman making this work and that is the reason to be making it’. I never approach my practice in that way. In her essay ‘“Presence” in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation’, Amelia Jones suggests, ‘it is hard to identify the patterns of history while one is embedded in them. We “invent” these patterns, pulling the past together into a manageable picture, retrospectively.’ 5 In light of this, what do you think the future holds for interpreting these kinds of practices — where to from here? (LB): I don’t know how to answer this. The future is not my strong suit. (PfL): Although the augmenting of documentation as an artistic outcome will continue to grow in our practice, we are also interested in valuing the fleeting and non‑documented. However, we are aware that — just as we experience the work of Carolee Schneemann or Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh though performance remnants and documentation — when we look through the lens of the future, it will be the myths of the performances and the material surrounding them that will be remembered. For better or worse. Bree Richards in the gallery, where we stood in silence to ‘remember’ this ‘forgotten’ figure of Australian performance art. Through this act of remembering Barbara Cleveland, we were interested in questioning who is written in and who is written out of history, and how narratives are constructed and re-presented. (LB): More so than ever, my work is informed by the history of performance art, generally more than any other feminist art practices. Historical performance works that are specifically influential on my practice are not specifically feminine or masculine. The feminine aspect of High horse comes from a historical photograph of a female circus performer who could ride a horse standing up. There is also the work The Hero 2001 by Marina Abramović, where she sits proudly on a horse holding a white flag. Her work was about her father, not specifically female strength. I feel the act of capturing a moment that is not lasting is the essential ingredient of performance art history that endures in my own work — directly or indirectly. Bas Jan Alder has had a profound influence on the nature of recent works I have made, where the act is nothing if not captured. It gives a sense of isolation and immediacy compounded with location and environment. (PfL): While our work may not always be in direct conversation with feminist art histories, there is an inherent awareness embedded in our practice. Andrea Fraser’s work and writing has been a great influence, as has the work of choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer — particularly, her thoughts on movement becoming an object and her polemic No manifesto 1965. Closer to home, the inherently performative sculpture and installation of Mikala Dwyer has been a longtime influence. Using the body to address the politics of space is manifest in these artists’ work, and ours. Embodied Acts