Bloom

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

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Hearing Line Seeing Sound

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

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SCCA Sunday Coaster: Hearing Line Seeing Sound

Hearing Line Seeing Sound

March 30th 2022

Kellie O’dempsey with sound artist Mick Dick Live drawing and sound performance in the Bunker at the Eumundi Hotel for the Sunshine Coast Arts Alliance Program Suncoaster.

Many years ago, I was at a talk by the German film director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris Texas, Pina and so on). He spoke about film as an amalgam of sound and vision. Of course, I immediately recalled David Bowies’ song from the Low Album Sound and Vision. 

            “Blue, Blue electric blue that’s the colour of my room…. Waiting for the gift of sound and vision.” 

From memory (which is not my best attribute) Wim Wenders went on to say that when sound and vision occur together, a 3rd sensory experience happens. A sense of wonder—a phenomenon where the audience can be transported.   

This is called multisensory integration where simultaneously experienced sensory modalities become a single multisensory perception. Since humans are animals, we use sight, touch, taste and so on to affect how we make meaning and perceive our experiences in the world. 

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. 

Kellie and Mick collaborate in developing site-generated improvised performances that attempt to transfix as they trace their location at the intersection of line and audio, sound and vision. Performances include MONA FOMA, Biennale of Sydney, White Night Melbourne, National Gallery of Australia and Museum of Brisbane. 

Photographer: Timothy Birch

Presented by

What did you say?

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

Hardenvale

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Hardenvale – our home in Absurdia
31 Oct 2020 – 31 Jan 2021
Wagga Wagga Regional Gallery | Wagga Wagga, NSW

Hardenvale – our home in Absurdia is a real-scale, immersive, house-like environment by Australian artists Catherine O'Donnell, Kellie O'Dempsey and Todd Fuller.

Through drawing, projection, built form, sound and movement, this collaborative project references the architecture of post war fibro housing as well as spaces the group describe as 'the cultural fringe of Australia'. Crossing three generations, these artists’ re-imagine lived domestic space while expanding the practice of drawing to create an intimate and unsettling experience. Harvesting images from personal narratives of imperfect moments (both familiar and strange), Hardenvale is a humble dwelling made from drawing in which to spend time. This installation invites visitors to reflect on their own experiences and memories of home.

Credits | Photographer: The Artist, Tayla Martin

Just Draw – Bathurst

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Just Draw | Group Exhibition
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
19 August – 2 October 2016
Opening night performance: 19 August
Curators: Todd Fuller and Lisa Woolfe

Just Draw celebrates drawing and its many possibilities; performance, multimedia, installation, sculpture, kinetics and robotics. Exhibition curators Todd Fuller and Lisa Woolfe present Australian artists who leverage the possibilities of this deceptively simple medium.

Artists include Connie Anthes, Flatline, Hannah Bertram, John Bokor, Matilda Michell, Kelly O’Dempsey, Catherine O’Donnell, Hannah Quinlivan, Jeremy Smith, Jack Stahel, Grant Stewart, Jane Théau and Paul White.

Photographer · Todd Fuller

unSeen (confined space)

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unSeen (confined space)
Metro Arts, Professional Development Residency, Brisbane
21 – 27 March 2016
Artists: Sarah Houbolt, Kellie O’Dempsey and Michael Dick

unSeen (confined space) is a project in development filmed at Metro Arts, Brisbane. unSeen is a sensory game of call and response exploring perception and the disparate. Using drawn lines, body gestures, digital projection and sound design, this live gesamtkunstwerk or total artwork starts a feedback loop that informs an unwritten script as the artists unite with each other without utilising  verbal communication. Together they interrogate the public and the private, and what is seen and unseen within a small space.

Photograoher and videographer • Fiarrah Poole 

TAPE on

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TAPE on: a temporal collision of line

Griffith University Art Museum | Brisbane
24 February 2016
Artists: Vanghoua Anthony Vue and Kellie O’Dempsey

Interactive performance with the possibility of play.

In collaboration with Vanghoua Anthony Vue, TAPE on: a temporal collision of line is an interactive performance work that integrates the gestural and geometric. Informed by traditional drawing methods, O’Dempsey’s performance drawings respond to movement, and the body in an immediate environment. Vue draws on popular culture, street art, the everyday, DIY ethic, and brings aspects of his Hmong heritage into a contemporary art context. Together these two artists will collide in a conversation through line.

Photographer and videographer • Vanghoua Anthony Vue

Before I leave (silent)

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Before I Leave (silent)

POP (Post Graduate and other projects) Gallery, | Woolloongabba, Brisbane
16 January 2016

A drawing conversation by Piyali Ghosh (India) and Kellie O’Dempsey (Australia)

Sound by Mick Dick (Australia)

An improvised drawing performance for one night only.

Presented by Griffith Centre for Creative Arts Research & Woolloongabba Art Gallery

Photographer and Videographer •  Emma Wright

Bomb the Wall

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Bomb the Wall
Queensland College of Art
Friday October 2, 2015

KELLIE O’DEMPSEY + FLATLINE (TODD FULLER AND CARL SCIBBERAS)

Visual artist Todd and dancer and choreographer Carl Scibberas in collaboration with Kellie O’Dempsey. Bomb the Wall of the Griffith Galleries for the closing of Drawing International Brisbane 2015.

Photographer •  Lisa Kurtz

uNatural

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uNatural
Art Forum, Visiting Artist, Drawing and Print Media Department, School of Art
Print Media and seminar room | Australian National University, Canberra
26 March 2015
Kellie O’Dempsey + Jaanika Peerna (Estonia/NY)

Collaborative drawing performance at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 2015.

Jaanika Peerna: movement drawings by hand.

Kellie O’Dempsey: drawing and digital via projections (light drawings) that would draw on existing spaces between the works, connecting them in response to Jaanika’s performance.

Collaborating through performance drawing, Jaanika Peerna (Estonia/NY) and Kellie O’Dempsey (Australia) exchange directives like weather patterns; lines build and change embodying a shared experience. This international collaboration connects directly in the expanding fields of live drawing. Jaanika describes her force as connected to nature, the natural phenomena of the self. Where Kellie work is site-generated, responding directly to Jaanika’s performance and the space via the ephemeral light drawings that build, move and disappear.

Photographers •  Kellie O’Dempsey and Jaanika Peerna

Draw to Perform 2 – London

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Draw to Perform 2
Number 3 Performance space | Deptford, London, UK
16 – 17 March 2015

Artists: Gerald Royston Curtis (UK), dolanbay (Berlin), Poppy Jackson (UK), Ram Samocha (Israel/ UK), Yara Pina (Brazil), Jordan Mckenzie (UK), Bettina Fung (Hong Kong/UK), Kevin Townsend (USA), Kellie O’Dempsey (Australia), Bertrand Flachot (France), Jennifer Wroblewski (USA), Holly Matthews (UK), Shoshanah Ciechanowski (Israel), John Court (UK/Finland), River Lin (Taiwan), Gosia Wlodarczak (Poland/Australia), Rachel Grant (Scotland/UK).

Draw to Perform 2 was a collective live drawing installation event in London, independently curated by artist Ram Samocha. International artists presented works using conventional drawing tools—pencils, charcoal, and markers—and unconventional digital prints, experimental mark making methods, and labouring tools, including Polyfilla and plumber’s twine. The nature of these materials determined how the artist acted, moved, and performed in the space. Concurrently performing drawings for six continuous hours, the twelve artists (including Kellie O’Dempsey) used diverse strategies in accordance with their own practice, working within self-determined parameters in separate areas of a warehouse.

The space was open to the public as a live durational time-based performance. The audience could wander through or participate in (some) works according to their desire and interest. As witnesses, the audience activated the space, which made them participants in the event. The space or site of a performance drawing can inform the work. The Draw to Perform 2 venue was a warehouse in South London. It was a coId, hard, dark concrete building in an inner-city industrial area. The location can also invariably affect and establish how the performance drawing is read.

Kellie’s own performance drawings at the event were a direct response to the space and those who occupied it during the six hours. The installation or configuration of her setup was designed according to the architectural features of the corner she inhabited. Using materials gathered from the local hardware and art shop, digital projections, and black tape, the images traversed two walls and the floor. She drew both the moving gestures of the audience and the other artists that could be seen from her space, constantly swapping materials from traditional means to live digital drawing and animation in an attempt to respond to the mechanics of the environment. She drew River Lin as he moved through his floured surface; she drew the viewers who passed by and those who stayed; She attempted to draw the ever changing now. As people moved, the drawing was altered, producing an evolving observational tableau.

Video https://drawtoperform.com/draw-to-perform-page/draw-to-perform2/videos/
Draw to Perform 2 website

Other artists performances

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Photographer · Marco Berardi

Draw/Delay – White Night Festival Melbourne

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Draw/Delay • White Night Festival Melbourne 2015
Caledonian Lane | Melbourne CBD
7pm — 7am, February 2015
Artists: Kellie O’Dempsey and Mick Dick

Draw/Delay is a performance drawing and sound installation which reveals the workings of art-making as both a public and private event. Through live drawing and seductive audio manipulation, the romantic notion or myth of the artist in the studio is exposed.

An improvised collaboration with musician Mick Dick, artist Kellie O’Dempsey responds directly to sound and the immediate environment with live performance, marks on paper and digital drawing. Along with video and audio installation, the audience are invited to engage directly with the visceral process of creating. O’Dempsey investigates the uncanny, aiming to enable a playful and inclusive form of interaction.

White Night Festival event website

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PRESS

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SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

White Night Melbourne 2015: Up all night for dusk till dawn party
February 22, 2015
Cameron Woodhead

Almost every alleyway held a niche event – some trash, some treasure. The best of them was Kelly O’Dempsey and Mick Dick’s Draw/Delay – a beautiful fusion of live drawing, digital art and music that exposed the creative process to a public, and participatory, gaze.

Read more... 

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SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

White Night Melbourne 2015: The best of an all-night spectacle
Debbie Cuthbertson
February 21, 2015

A small scale highlight of
the night came from a live art and music collaboration between digital sound man Mick Dick and painter Kellie Dempsey. Taking place on Caledonian Lane with milk crates for seats, the show was aimed at exposing the process of making art. Dempsey delivered in spades using both a projected e-tablet along along with angular and deft brushstrokes on the canvas. Dick’s soundtrack was suitably mesmerising.

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TWITTER

Experiencing Draw/delay at Caledonian Lane  
Katherine Lim

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RED AND BLACK ARCHITECT (online magazine)

Draw/Delay saw traditional drawing artwork collide with multimedia to create a performance piece. This event explored the artistic methods of drawing as a performance piece. The collaboration between artist Kellie O’Dempsey and musician Mick Dick, was an action collage with sketches on paper projected on to a wall merged with simultaneous paint brushed directly upon the ‘canvas’, all set to a moody soundtrack. The live nature of this event showcased the creative process of the artist rather than just the ‘finished product’ making it an ideal inclusion in the White Night programme.

Read more...

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Photographers · Georgina Tait

Corner Dance Lab

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The Corner Dance Lab
Jasper Corner Federal | NSW
24 January 2015

A week-long collaboration between Philip Channells (Dance Integrated Australia) and Gavin Webber (The Farm). They were involved in a consolidated week of working with 10 renowned teachers sharing daily routines, practice, ideas and experiments with emerging and established dancers and choreographers.

Kellie O’Dempsey working in collaboration with Visual Artist Musician Ben Ely.

Classes are led by Phil Blackman, Philip Channells, Hsin-Ju Chiu (Raw), Kate Harman, Lee-Anne Litton, Grayson Millwood, Kimberly McIntyre, Timothy Ohl, Laurie Young and Gavin Webber.

Photographer: Veda Dante

Dis/close

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Dis/close
Kellie O’Dempsey
2014 | Digital video | 4:23 minutes (performance photographs)

This work aims to discuss the relationship between the individual and the constant manipulation of facts by the media and governing political powers, which appear to conceal and blindfold the populace. In silence, through a game of reveal and conceal, the environment and the appearance of an individual is transformed through digital drawing that exposes the head of a man in disquiet and contemplation. The hand drawn, pixelated lines consistently uncover, redefine and blur what is actually available to us. Through the process of drawing as enquiry, Dis/close identifies and investigates the interconnected experience of human engagement. The use of the Tagtool (live digital drawing and animation device) aims to translate those elements into a drawn video work that allows an authentic process of collaboration and improvisation. The outcome, a strange, poetic intervention of the digital drawing that uncovers, confuses and transforms an isolated man.

Describing her work as a Performance Drawing practice, O’Dempsey aims to enable an inclusive form of cultural interaction via interdisciplinary performance and play. Hybrid in form, O’Dempsey’s practice incorporates projection, video, collage, architecture, gestural line and digital drawing. Investigating notions of transformation and the uncanny, she collaborates with performers combining hand drawn marks with digital projection and live animation. Experimental and emergent, O’Dempsey invites the audience to engage directly with the visceral process of making.

Photographer and Videographer: Kris Garner

Responsive Performance - Hawksbury Regional Gallery

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Responsive Performance for 'A General Map of Caves' - Hawksbury Regional Gallery
Hawksbury Regional Gallery
13 June 2014

Live site-specific performance of drawing, dance, sound & projection by Kellie O'Dempsey and Tanya Voges in response to the current exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, 'A General Map of Caves'.

Photographers and Videographers:  Kellie O'Dempsey and Tanya Voges

Vestige Collective

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Vestige Collective
Wonkytooth dub @ Station Street Studios
June 2014

Kellie O’Demspey in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Tanya Voges together investigate new forms in Hybrid art production via dance, live performance and drawing.

This collaboration has had support from the Choreographic Research Residency, Tasters / Testers  with Critical Path (Choreographic Research Centre Sydney).

Together developing performance and choreographic strategies, Choreographer Tanya Voges and Visual artist Kellie O’Dempsey were in mentorship with New Media Expert Mic Gruchy, Dramaturg Martyn Coutts and Cognitive Psychologist Dr Kate Stevens. The production team also included the work of filmmaker Tim Standing, technical designer Paul Osbourne, sound artist Mick Dick and photographer Maylei Hunt.

Vestige Collective is the collaborative vehicle through which innovative applications in digital manipulation and audience participation are utilised to create an inclusive and interconnected form of cultural interaction. The collaborative piece is available to a broad cross section of the community to generate narratives that are unique to location. These stories are responded to through dance, new media projection, live feed video and sound. A montage of shared experiences becomes transformed into a mesmerising theatrical encounter.

The unique way that Vestige Collective combines both the analogue (drawing and dance) and digital (projections and audience sourced data) to realise that the vision for this project creates an emergent multi-faceted performance that fuses physical and virtual performance modalities. In developing this cross-disciplinary work designed for broad cultural audiences and diverse spaces, Vestige Collective generates an inclusive form of cultural experience.

Photographer: Maylei Hunt
Videographer: Tim Standing

DRAWinternational

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Artist in Residence at DRAWinternational
2013
Caylus | France

As an artist in residence at Draw International, I developed a body of work investigating hand drawn gestural mark making in combination with live digital drawing. Incorporating elements unique to Caylus, France resulting in site-specific installation in Vitrine that overlooks the market square.

I made drawings of the villagers during the day and experimented with digital projections in the evening. A progressive drawing installation work combined my observations and interest on Medi-evil surfaces and ancient stonework combined with the people of Caylus.

This project investigates time, space, and movement as narrative and intends to avail an opportunity and a possibility for interaction way through experiential making and play. Identifying and unraveling notions of public and private space via drawing, I explore the interconnected experience of human engagement and hope to perform a public work.

Photographer: John McNorton

Paper Jam Roll

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Paper Jam Roll (3 parts)
June 2011
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts | Brisbane, Australia
Artists - Kellie O'Dempsey and Mick Dick, Azo Bell and Peter Dehlsen

Put 20 meters of paper, an artist who draws like a maniac, a double bassist, guitarist and drummer with inks, pastels, brushes, electronic drawing projections, a time limit, put it all together in one room and you've got a Paper jam roll.

Live performance drawing artist Kellie O'Dempsey and the improvisational groove of musician Mick Dick (The Knie), Azo Bell and Peter Dehlsen together are inspired by the direct encounter with the audience (you), the site (the Valley) and the experience (the happening).

They invite the audience to be part of in the evolution of a visual and aural installation performance art work by merely being present. Come join the transforming liminal space,

"you come as a spectator and maybe you discover you are caught in it after all..."
- The blurring of art and life. Kaprow p15

Nancy Pellegrini, the Classical and Performance Editor of Time Out Beijing/Time Out Shanghai was present during Kellie's performance in Shanghai 2010, she said:

“Having visual art and performing arts going on at the same time was thrilling, and left me with an incredible feeling of completeness, as if the furthest reaches of my brain were being touched all at once.

Kellie's work was never distracting or obtrusive; she was an equal partner to the musicians, turning out work of equal value. The work itself so captured the emotions of the afternoon, and the feeling of mental fullness I so enjoy but so rarely find.”

Paper Jam Roll - Part 1
June 4 2011
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts | Brisbane

Paper Jam Roll - Part 2
June 2011
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts | Brisbane

Paper Jam Roll - Part 3
June 4 2011
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts | Brisbane

Photographer + Videographer: Cal MacKinnon