Constance ARI

Presented in INFLIGHT's project space, this two-part work addresses ideas of absence and incorporates memories associated with loss. Throughout November the two artists will create durational/performative works and scores for video and sound in the form of tasks with the results being presented in the final week of November (23 ­ 30) 2006.  

A domestic dinner table will be presented within the space, (a site associated with intimate communication), which relates to pre-recorded elements such as a 5 day home video diary, recounting memories of an absent figure and a telephone conversation describing experiences of absence.  Although closed throughout November, up until the 23rd, the voices of those at the dinner table will be heard behind closed doors of INFLIGHT's project space.

This is the second part of this work (originally presented in a similar fashion in March of 2006), and has evolved in various ways. The video diary has extended beyond a personal account to a group account of an absent figure, the telephone conversation has extended to a mobile in busy public streets in Hobart and Sydney and the table setting, for the opening, is now the site for a durational performance where performers engage in a real-time meal and respond to a task-driven score. The remainder of the exhibition will feature this performance projected in the space.

Deborah Pollard is an artist, performer and director based in Sydney. Her work focuses on hybrid collaborations with arts and non-arts practitioners. She has created a number of multi-disciplined performance and installation works. Deborah was the Artistic Director of Salamanca Theatre Company in Hobart from 1997 to 2000. In 2000 Deborah received a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship for research in Europe She received the Rex Cramphorn Scholarship in 2001 and an Australia Council Fellowship from the New Media Arts Board 2002/03. In early 2006 she toured her performance installation Shapes of Sleep to various galleries and venues in the U.K She is currently Artistic director at Urban Theatre Projects, Sydney.

Matt Warren is a Hobart-based artist and musician who creates video and sound installations, single channel video and electronic/electro-acoustic music. In 1999 Matt received an Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship and moved to Vancouver, Canada to study for his Master of Fine Arts degree. Matt has exhibited in Sydney, Melbourne, throughout Tasmania, Vancouver, Tabor; Czech Republic and New Zealand.  He is currently undertaking a PhD at UTAS.

Matt and Deborah have previously collaborated on the work Still Life, a community performance and installation work set in the heritage flour mill at Oatlands, Tasmania in 1999 as well as Ecstasy of Communication, a multimedia maze at Salamanca Art Centre¹s Long Gallery 1998. Both are interested in the potential of the live performer in the context of the visual arts and utilise performative action, interview and documentary elements in an installative context. Both artists cite influences such as John Cage with his task-based scores and performances as well his writing and theories of silence and Tim Etchells, UK based performance artist whose work focuses on memory.