exhibition

precursor

Gallery Central [NMTafe, october – november 2024]. Precursor evolved from an 2023 exhibition expression of interest to be a collaboration between soula vouyoucalos-veyradier, alice cummins and andrew stumpfel. It includes the work of andre lipscombe, peter bowles, shiloh perry. Precursor was a fast exhibition devised for the student body that staged objects/artefacts from an arts practice at the newcastle street collective. It gave view to what commissioned work and an on going arts practice looks like.

The exhibition investigated the commonwealth of factors in and around practice and the precursor environment around artforms/process and application/product/event/performance.

Images: soula vouyoucalos-veyradier

performance/interaction  

A series of interactions over six sessions by alice cummins. Documented on 13 november 2024.

Alice Cummins is an Australian dance artist with a 40 year history of contemporary performance making. Her approach generates a radical philosophy and practice that informs her work as a performance maker and educator influencing artists across diverse disciplines of dance, theatre, writing, sound, visual art, sculpture and film making. In the precursor exhibition record document, andrew stumpfel wrote:

‘The demonstration of ineffable in such a succinct way was a shock. The elements included the building of a mental space [where the viewer is present to high level concentration] and where there is an investigation of the human scale: that gap that matches that arm span, that space is that foot width. But. To reverse engineer the episodes and to use words only gets you so far.’ 

Gregory Pryor wrote a response to a previous Alice Cummins piece [Subterranean Knowledge: terra, Holmes à Court Gallery, Perth, January 19 2024]:

‘I couldn’t help feeling that this performance was also a gesture of gratitude by a performer thankful for having spent a long lifetime of movement on the earth. By repositioning themselves underground, they could detect which of these movements linger, or even lodge under the surface, to one day find union with other enduring movements of people across the earth.’