GFE (Girlfriend Experience) examines the social and anti-social animal in all of us. Loneliness is a major issue in Australia, but paradoxically loneliness is something that unites us all. I will explore this contradiction, with an audience, in a similar manner to the types of relationships/transactions I have with my clients. The verbal and non-verbal boundary between absolute intimacy and utter separation.
Merging my child-like visual aesthetic, Full-Body-Puppetry, Body-Masks, intimate performance-making process, and the rules, regulations and rituals of sex work and client interactivity. I will construct a world of human, more-than-human and non-human forms. The Body-Puppets are both characters and the embodiment of certain roles, tasks and actions from my workplace; visually refracted through the ever-shifting lense of my BDP.
I will also be continuing the findings from my two-week residency with Performance Space on Gadigal Land. Working with mentor Emma May aka Betty Grumble I have become fascinated with shame and the deeply imbedded toxic opinions of sexual female bodies within society. How the harmful external attitudes become core beliefs and personal pains instead of celebration and acceptance. To quote famous Australian sex worker Elizabeth Burton “who made the body a rude and dirty thing?”
GFE (Girlfriend Experience) will be my first solo work where I aim to completely create my own visual and sensory world or immersive experience for an audience to explore. Surveying a series of moments, rather than a linear storyline. Showcasing the ephemeral, sometimes heightened and sometimes dull moments of sex work, client relationships and BPD in an abstract way. Though dealing with the solitary, the work will be filled with idiosyncratic humour and ridiculousness, both bombastic and ‘bimbastic’. I’ve been a part of the sex work industry for six years now, I have experienced both changes and setbacks within acceptance and understanding of the industry. There is ongoing regulation and oppression of women/femme/trans bodies, online censorship and the judgement of people within the industry. This will continue to be relevant until major changes are made. I am privileged to have experienced a level of safety that many other sex workers have not – I will always be grateful and forever learning from the radical women/femme/trans women who came before me and who exist today on the front lines making changes for sex work within so called Australia. I think continuing the conversation around sex work is vital for progressing in society, it is the oldest profession in the world yet it is so misunderstood and vilified within many cultures. This work is for everyone.
