Live Performance

Bloom /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Bloom

Presented by Orange Regional Gallery and Orange City Council 

Kellie O’Dempsey x Mick Dick
Large-scale public performance 

Roberstson Park, Orange, NSW
Friday 3 November 2023

Part of Orange City Council’s Future City Public Art project, Kellie O’Dempsey and Mick Dick presented light projections onto trees in the park, synchronized to the rhythm of Mick Dick’s music, during two after dark performances.

This large-scale projection performance that contemplates the transformation of blossoming flora as an act of wonder. Using light and sound, shape shifting images of illuminated colour move across existing foliage with growing lines, bold shapes and electric hues of blush, deep orange and amber. 

Bloom acted as an emotional directive drawing the audience into the public space. Slow-moving lines of light grow to a monastic sound performed live in Robertson Park. This work offered elements of ranscendental connection and celebrates the phenomena of nature as shared experience of everchanging wonderment.

This interdisciplinary performance used video projection, animation and sound. Using iPads connected via HDMI cables to and a perfectly positioned projector. Together sound artist Mick Dick, Kellie O’Dempsey will drew and animate live to an improvised soundtrack of delay and reverb that filled the park.

Photography John Daly and Cecilie Knowles
Videography John daly

Hearing Line Seeing Sound /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Hearing Line Seeing Sound

Performed at OUTBOUND Contemporary Dance x Live Art Festival, Sunshine Coast, Queensland

Kellie O’Dempsey x Mick Dick
Friday 6 October & 7 October, 2023


A live drawing and sound performance. 

A multisensory integration where simultaneously experienced sensory modalities become a single multisensory perception. Operating as a shared experience, Hearing Line Seeing Sound is a moment in Kellie and Mick’s ongoing exploration of sound and vision as a collaborative improvised performance of line and tune. Simultaneously Kellie’s line drawings of light are site generated in direct conversation with Mick’s evolving tonal audio. They attempt to enter together as they trace their location at the intersection of drawing and audio sound and vision.

OUTBOUND Contemporary Dance x Live Art Festival supported by ArtsCoast, Sunshine Coast Council, Regional Arts Development Fund Queensland

Photographer Tim Birch
Video Time Birch 
Short Video Ruby Donohoe

What did you say? /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

 

What did you say?
7 May 2021 – 16 May 2021
Botanica - Contemporary Art Outside | City Botanic Gardens | Brisbane, QLD

On the epidermis of a tree's leaves, microscopic pores called stomata exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. The word 'stomata' comes from the Greek word 'stoma' meaning 'mouth'. What did you say? reimagines a tree's stomata as the mouth through which the planet breathes. 

Some mouths breathe with ease; others struggle to catch their breath; a silent few are deathly still. Viewers are asked to listen and engage in deep, conscious breathing, to be present in the moment and to connect, consider and rest. 

Using augmented reality, projected imagery and a soundscape of breathing, the artwork responds to our strange and ever-shifting social and environmental climate.

Helena Papageorgiou (augmented reality), Michael Dick (sound).

Credit | Photography & Video: Thomas Oliver
Image Credits Horizon Festival

 

Continuum /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

 

Continuum
Exhibition: 24 Aug - 1 Sep 2019
The Old Ambo, Nambour as part of Horizon Festival | Sunshine Coast, QLD
Kellie O’Dempsey | Sound: Michael Dick | Augmented Reality: Helena Papageorgiou

Continuum brings together video, drawing and performance in an installation exploring process and possibility. These works present the ever-changing moment as line and action. Revealing drawing as transformation, using both traditional and digital means, the artist is seen drawing and un-drawing lines in a mesmerising continuum of making.

Links: Horizon Festival | Facebook

 
 
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Horizon Festival was supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland

 
 
 

Outside the Lines /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Image credit: Jono Searle

 

Outside the Lines
Performance: 24 May 2019 | Exhibition: 10 May - 11 Aug 2019
Museum of Brisbane as part of BAD Festival | Brisbane, QLD
Kellie O’Dempsey | Sound: Mick Dick | Performers: Saara Roppola and Maris Georgiou

Immerse yourself in a haven of colour, light and sound, as performance and installation artist Kellie O’Dempsey places audiences right in the middle of her artwork, which fuses digital drawing, performance, animated video projection and sound.

For BRISBANE ART DESIGN (BAD), Kellie teamed up with sound designer Mick Dick and performers Saara Roppola and Marisa Georgiou to perform new work and engage in discussions about their co-operative making process.

Links: Instagram | Brisbane Art and Design (BAD)

 

Credits | Photographer: Jono Searle

 
 
 

Dirt and Ash /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

 

Dirt and Ash :: Fiona Fell and Kellie O'Dempsey
20 October – 2 December 2018 | Opening Night 19 October 2018
Gallery 1: The Margaret Olley Gallery, Lismore Regional Gallery | Lismore, Australia
Kellie O’Dempsey and Fiona Fell | Sound: Mick Dick

Kellie O’Dempsey and Fiona Fell perform Dirt & Ash, an immersive multimedia installation about the relationship between the artist and work of art with Mick Dick’s (sound artist) performance on opening night.

Exhibition was opened by Dr Barbara Bolt, Professor in Contemporary Arts and Culture, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music.

Dirt and Ash displays a dynamic exchange between two mid-career artists. Fiona Fell and Kellie O'Dempsey explore the links between artists’ bodies, ceramic sculpture and performance drawing and video as they inquire into the nature of each other’s creative processes. As works are built, stacked, re-formed and incorporated through performance and live drawing–the underbelly of their creative practices is exposed.  

Sharing the material relationships of clay and charcoal, the shared experience of loss and survival is uncovered (in terms of life and their creative processes). Fiona Fell and Kellie O'Dempsey dramatise their perseverant search for presence, synchronising moments in the studio as performance.


Links | Catalogue // Lismore Gallery website

Exhibition Images

Performance

Videogragher: Steven Kwan

Exhibition Catalogue

Credits | Photographer: Darcy Grant // Videographer: Steven Kwan

 
 
 

The never-ending line /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

 

Kellie O'Dempsey: The never-ending line, NGA Play at The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Saturday 16 June – 28 October 2018
National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia

Kellie O’Dempsey invites you into her living sketchbook, an immersive space of moving marks and dancing lines. Digital projections collide with traditional drawing in a series of dynamic and colourful experiences and creative opportunities. Contribute to the unique drawing journey as you follow the never ending line to shadow puppets, 3D drawing constructions and live animation before getting into the drawing rink for an immersive drawing experience. The never-ending line investigates drawing as a way of collaboration and transformation as it features sound elements composed by Mick Dick.

Links: NGA website
Media: SMH Article | City News Article

Exhibition

Performance

Videographer - Sixth Row

Videographer - Sixth Row

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Credits | Videographer: Sixth Row

Funded by Australia Council for the Arts, with support from Create NSW, The NSW Artists’ Grant (NAVA)
Also supported by the Parramatta Artist Studios and Bundanon Trust Artist in Residence program

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Becoming Becoming /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Photographer: Angela Little

 

Becoming Becoming
13 April – 20 May 2018 | Exhibition Opening 13 April 2018
Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts | Townsville, Australia
Kellie O’Dempsey | Sound: Mick Dick | Dancers: Dance North Felix Samson and Samantha Hines

Becoming Becoming is a dynamic site generated installation that explores the links between the human body, making and transformation through improvisation. Both a live performance and as an exhibition, this work maps processes of collaboration and aliveness through live drawing and collaboration. With Sound artist Mick Dick, Dance North dancers Felix Sampson and Sam Hines the gallery space is expanded through live performance and digital projection. 

Attempting to entice all those who enter Becoming Becoming is a living collage through the flow of line, sound, colour and projection an immersive engaged environment evolves.

Links | Umbrella Studio event page // Invitation

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Image credit | Photographer: Angela Little

 

Moving Through /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Photographer: Lois Lim | Performer: Marisa Georgiou

Photographer: Lois Lim | Performer: Marisa Georgiou

 

Moving Through
Performance at Flowstate | Brisbane, Australia
Saturday 27 October & Sunday 28 October 2018
Kellie O’Dempsey | Sound: Mick Dick | Performers: Saara Rappola & Marisa Georgiou
Produced by Metro Arts and South Bank Corporation 
Funded by Australia Council for the Arts

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Moving Through is a spirited, site-generated image and sound performance that imagines the intermediate space between this life and the next.

Performance installation artist Kellie O’Dempsey draws on a personal tale that reveals the importance of ritual when dealing with death. Moving Through maps a guided journey of departure and brings the space to life using digital drawing and animated video projection with physical performers and sound.

Moving Through culminates in two stunning and visceral evening performances.

Links | Flowstate Event Page

Videographer: Thomas Oliver

 
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Credit | Videographer and Photographer: Thomas Oliver

 
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away and towards /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Photographer: Louis Lim

Photographer: Louis Lim

 

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 /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

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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

Performance

Performance stills

 
 

Credits | Photographer: Silvia Forni // Videographer: Gus Frias

 

Lightening Field /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Photographer: Naomi O'Reilly

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 /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Photographer: Natsky

 

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

 
 

A Line in the Night /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

Photographer: Anna Hill

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

 

Under Arena - Drawing International Brisbane /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

 

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 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

 

Bald, Bald Head and Other Stories /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

 

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.

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Photographer 

 

JADA Performance /  by Kellie O'Dempsey

 

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

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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