2008 Performance Art Series

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The Blue Oyster Performance Art Series was held for the second time as a part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival for a week in May 2008. Each Performer was chosen by the curator to cover a different aspect of Performance Art Practice. We had eight artists come from New Zealand and Australia to perform. There were performances held in the Blue Oyster Gallery, at the University of Otago and around the streets of Dunedin so there was a wide audience covered during the week. The performances held in the gallery were mostly attended by our usual Blue Oyster community – the longer performances such as Sach Catts and Pippa Sanderson giving the audience the opportunity to come and go as they pleased. The artist talks in the gallery were intimate and conversational which we found were beneficial for the artists being able to get direct feedback from the audience.

“Hold” by David Cross was held in the Union Hall at the University. This work was seen by a very large audience that mainly consisted of University and Polytechnic students with 50 people participating in the work per day. This was fantastic as the exposure of the Blue Oyster Gallery was widened and a very exciting contemporary art work was discussed and seen by a young audience. The street performances by Brent Harris and Cellulite Rose involved an often unaware audience, catching them as they walked past and in this bringing performance art to the general Dunedin public.

The artists involved were: David Cross a very well known and celebrated performance artist and senior lecturer at Massey University, Wellington, bringing down his large inflatable work “Hold”. This was the first time this work was shown in the South Island. Brent Harris, who has a Masters of Fine Art from Auckland and is a noted street performance artist. He guided groups on witty tours through Dunedin city grabbing attention of the locals on the way. We were very pleased to have emerging Australian artist Sach Catts join us at the Blue Oyster. He is currently completing honours in his fine arts degree in Sydney. His work explored and destroyed a replica structure of Sol LeWitt on a BMX. Pippa Sanderson and Kristy Lilico joined their concepts together for the work “Surface” which they have performed over the country. Blowing ink onto the wall of the gallery to create a week long installation piece. Cellulite Rose a young artist from Auckland – her performance work “Public Appeal” was a conclusion of a series that were previously performed in Dunedin’s sister cities Edinburgh and Shanghai and involved intervening unknowingly on Dunedin locals. Gill Gately a practicing artist who lives in Whangaparora. Her slow moving works “Prick” and “Lawn” was a response to Performance Painting. Joyoti Whylie lives and teaches art in Auckand. Her sound and video piece “Answer Phone” was our only sound work in the Performance Series. Curated by Jenna Todd.