Lightening Field / October 19, 2016 by Kellie O'Dempsey

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 / October 15, 2016 by Kellie O'Dempsey

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

Just Draw – Bathurst / August 19, 2016 by Kellie O'Dempsey

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.

13995669_10155165817751038_4447342914144298413_o1-760x760.jpg

Photographer · Todd Fuller

unSeen (confined space) / March 21, 2016 by Kellie O'Dempsey

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 / February 25, 2016 by Kellie O'Dempsey

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

A Line in the Night / February 6, 2016 by Kellie O'Dempsey

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