Temperance Hall's 2017 Resident Artist - Shian Law

07/03/17

Art takes time and space. 

When I think about the absolute condition in which one can honour the role of artist, it ultimately returns to the simplicity of time and space. It asks of a room where one can live the holistic and embodied process of practice, sometimes as simple as placing an idea in a room. Perhaps the artist will return tomorrow to look at it from a different angle; or dismantle the idea; or even empty the room and start again. In returning to time and space, I test my conviction and commitment to the act of art making. Under the stewardship of Phillip Adams, the Temperance Hall paints a much bigger picture to that analogy.

Phillip Adams is the one artist who fronts our community to continuously re-define experimental practice in dance. Adams’ practice and leadership epitomises an audacious artistic vision. He stubbornly refuses the status quo of choreographic practice. His provocations displace common perceptions of what performance may be, thus in a state of disorientation we may be offered an abundance of violent beauty. Adams inspires many of the forthcoming generation of artists to work tirelessly, and fail boundlessly, as a practice of faith in experimentalism.

It is in this spirit, I am absolutely humbled to be the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Temperance Hall. First, I will dedicate the residency to a collaborative research with performance/visual artist Johan Lundin (Sweden). Johan and I bonded through our residency at Cité International des Art, Paris. Our artistic camaraderie is based on a shared enquiry in our lived identities and practices: the indissolubility or taxonomical division between art and life, performance and theatricality, self and others. This enquiry will underpin our formal investigation in a six week residency at the Temperance Hall, followed by an exchange in Malmö, Sweden in 2018.

I will also dedicate the residency to pursue the study of Grey Area, one of the research vectors in my new work, Vanishing Point in Dance Massive Festival 2017. The archeological act of unearthing Phillip Adams’ Grey Area sometimes traverses between inscribing a historical event and writing a fantastical fiction. The summoning of this revenant is to haunt the beloved Mr. P with his very own mastery of postmodern pastiche, and in turn, I may find a way to dispossess the tyrannical spectre of artistic lineage.

Vanishing Point - https://vimeo.com/204003254

Dance Massive - http://dancemassive.com.au/program/vanishing-point/

Johan Lundin - http://johanlundin.com/johanlundin.com/Johan_Lundin.html

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