Opening performance at 5.30pm (before opening speeches)
Kellie O’Dempsey and Fiona Fell perform Dirt & Ash, an immersive multimedia installation about the relationship between the artist and work of art. Michael Dick (sound artist) performing on opening night.
Exhibition to be opened by: Dr Barbara Bolt, Professor in Contemporary Arts and Culture, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music
Dirt and Ash displays a dynamic exchange between two mid-career artists. Fiona Fell and Kellie O'Dempsey explore the links between artists’ bodies, ceramic sculpture and performance drawing and video, inquiring into the nature of each other’s creative processes. As works are built, stacked, re-formed and incorporated through performance and live drawing the underbelly of their creative practices is exposed.
Sharing the material relationships of clay and charcoal the shared experience of loss and survival is uncovered (in terms of life and their creative processes). Fiona Fell and Kellie O'Dempsey dramatize their perseverant search for presence, synchronising moments in the studio as performance.
