A new contemporary art exhibition at Perth Concert Hall’s Threshold artspace explores the relationships between museum and stage, dance and drama, music and movement.
Curated by Horsecross Arts’ creative director for contemporary art, Iliyana Nedkova, Stage runs from 10 May until 25 September across the wave of 22 screens and throughout Perth Concert Hall.
As well as the exhibition, limited edition artworks, talks and tours, Stage incorporated live performances and a dance and moving image masterclass in May, through its association with Perth Dance Festival, as well as the inaugural Perth Screen Dance Awards.
New commissions acquired for Stage include Ink in Movement (2016) – a 22-channel drawing installation by Bologna-born, Edinburgh-based artist Claudia Nocentini. Inspired by the studio practice of dance duo White & Givan, this ‘sketchbook’ of gestural life drawings substitutes traditional ink brushwork with the fast-paced stylus marks in a Zen Brush app.
Also inspired by White & Givan, new commission Breathe (2016) is a 22-channel video art installation by Scottish artist Theresa Pickles. Featuring snippets of the deeply moving duet Breathe created and performed by Errol White and Davina Givan, this work is infused with the mysterious haze and heavy ‘breathing’ of typography, images and animations. These two works will be touring to Traverse Theatre as White & Givan continue their run of Scottish performances.
Other 22-channel video art installations from the Horsecross Arts collection featuring in Stage are The Persistent Wave (2008) by Matt Hulse, Cantus (2008) by Alec Finlay, Entertainment (2010) by Joanna Bastos, Sonorous Forms (2006) by Catt Lee Marr, The Moon Landing Programme (2007) by Wang YuYang.
Single channel loops include Covers (2005) by Janek Schaefer, Voyage of No Return (2009), Ergin Cavesouglu), The Time it Take (2013) Katrina McPherson + Simon Fildes and Influx (2006) by Joanna Kane.
International winners of the Perth Screen Dance Awards, Augenblick Collective of Genoa: Alessandra Elettra Badoino, Marina Giardina, Fabio Poggi and Marco Longo’s short film Su Misura (Tailored) and UK winners The Motion Dance Collective’s End of the Block featuring choreography by Omari Carter have also been added to the Stage exhibition and the permanent museum collection at Threshold artspace.
Stagefright (2016) by Scottish artist Marc Marnie, another brand new Horsecross Arts commission and museum acquisition will be launched in the Threshold artspace in July as part of this year’s Southern Fried Festival of American roots music.
Iliyana Nedkova will host regular Wednesday morning Coffee, Croissant and Art tours of the exhibition during the run of Stage which also incorporates an area where ‘cunningly good’ designers-in-residence Volpa have transformed the space to support the Transform Perth Theatre fundraising campaign.
Iliyana Nedkova said:
“I am very pleased that we have created such a diverse programme at the intersection of performing arts and contemporary visual art. What is more, we are also building a lasting legacy at Threshold artspace by adding four new and recent works to the growing Dance strand in our permanent museum collection of contemporary art. Following Interval, Stage is the second of our three exhibitions this year accompanied by live performances and master classes, awards and screenings, talks and tours celebrating the relationship between visual and performing arts.”
Artist Claudia Nocentini who took inspiration for her drawing installation from White & Givan’s Breathe said:
"White & Givan’s Breathe speaks to me of the depth and meaning of human relationships, of the grounding quality and weight of intimacy. The performance instantly commands emotional connection and I chose gestural drawing because it allowed me to relate better with the dancers in movement. I set pen to paper without knowing what they were going to do or where they would be moving to in space, but, concentrating closely on their movement, I trusted my hand to follow almost without looking at the marks it was leaving. I let my hand dance with them and, since there was no time to describe the space they moved in, the signs took an appearance of scribbling, which I emphasised firstly by using ink and brush and subsequently by moving to Zen Brush, an app for calligraphy."