Artists
Performance: 2pm Saturday 9 April, 2022
Location: Contemporary Art Tasmania
Exhibition continues till 17 April, 2022
The One Hour Concert (Hobart) is part of Diana Baker Smith’s CAT exhibition The Lost Hour and the artists ongoing project focused on the archive of the Australian artist and dancer Philippa Cullen (1950-75). During her brief career, Cullen forged new connections between movement, sound and technology. During her research, Baker Smith learnt that Cullen’s 24 Hour Concert took place on the day when clocks are put forward for daylight savings, meaning it ran for only 23 hours. A second, one hour concert was planned for the following year, but Cullen died before it could take place. For this new performance at CAT Baker Smith has worked with dancers Wendy Morrow, Sofie Burgoyne and musician Jon Smeathers. Grappling with Cullen’s elusiveness in Australian art history, Baker Smith gestures toward alternative methods for valuing her practice and writing art history.
Like so many silent collaborators, Philippa Cullen continues to dance alongside – Wendy Morrow
Sofie Burgoyne is an artist with a background in dance and choreography who feels home in Walyalup / Fremantle and Lisboa, Portugal. Sofie gestures towards culture and community with performance, creation, collaboration, curation and teaching. She has a special interest in body-based, live performance, where ways of being in the world including sociality, experiencing, remembering and desiring can be felt, examined, rehearsed and / or critiqued. In 2021, Sofie completed a Masters in Choreography with a specialisation in New Performative Practices at Stockholm University of the Arts. Recent artist credits include a curatorial role for Rehearsing the future at Contemporary Art Tasmania and staging of ‘Close Encounters’ for Pope Alice at Dark Mofo 2021.
Trained at the Australian Ballet School, Wendy Morrow pursued a career dancing internationally with the Monte Carlo Ballet and The Scottish Ballet, and in Australia with The Sydney Dance Company and Danceworks, Melbourne. As a choreographer, collaborator and improviser, Wendy has been at the vanguard of integrating dance with other forms of creative practice for over fifty years. Compelled by moving slowly and the small acts of living, Wendy works with the body as material, stillness and critical writing practice. She has been creating multi-media performance installations with Leigh Hobba since the early nineties. She is a founding member of Tender, an experimental hybrid publishing collective of eight international, women artists and resides in nipaluna / Hobart.
Jon Smeathers is a musician and performance-based artist based in nipaluna / Hobart. Through his practice Jon, speculates on conditions of sociopolitical organisation entangled within listening practices, media archaeology and structural alienation. Jon has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally including at Serralves em Fiesta, Portugal, Melbourne Festival, the NOW Now Festival, Sydney and Dark Mofo. He has been awarded residencies and performance opportunities in Norway, Spain and Portugal, and grants through the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Tasmania, Creative Victoria & Hobart City Council.
Diana Baker Smith lives and works on the land of the Gadigal people. She is an artist who works across moving image, performance, and text. Her artistic practice is highly collaborative, research driven, and informed by feminist methodologies. Diana’s recent projects combine archival research, oral histories, and fiction to explore the politics of art history. Diana is a founding member of art collective Barbara Cleveland, and has worked collaboratively with artists Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore, and Kelly Doley since 2007. They have presented major solo exhibitions and commissions at the Art Gallery of NSW, Museum of Contemporary Art, Biennale of Sydney, and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Their work has been shown internationally, with video works and performances at Hayward Gallery in London, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan, and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. Diana holds a PhD from the University of NSW, where she is Lecturer in Fine Arts in the School of Art & Design.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body; by the NSW Government through Create NSW; and UNSW Art and Design.
