PICA will be transformed into a sporting arena, complete with bleachers, suspended ropes and cheerleaders for an exhibition and performance work by celebrated Western Australian collaborative duo Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont.
STADIUM, Gill and Mata Dupont’s first survey show, has been curated by PICA’s Leigh Robb. It is an exhibition which brings together performance, photographs and video works that the artists have produced over the past decade, some of which have not before been presented in Perth.
Central to the show is the idea of the exhibition as a stadium: a large structure for events, games or contests of strength with tiered seating for spectators.
Gill and Mata Dupont’s aesthetic is a highly stylised world of theatrical snap-shots and meticulously produced films, constructed from familiar 20th century popular sources ranging from Busby Berkeley choreography and Holywood musicals to Australian bushranger stories and international propaganda films.
A new performance piece has been produced specially for this exhibition and for the architecture of PICA. The work, entitled Ever Higher has been informed by the life and work of Leni Riefenstahl, possibly Germany’s most controversial filmmaker and widely known for her Nazi Party propaganda films of the 1930’s.
For Ever Higher the artists are working with a single female rope-aerialist and a group of local cheerleaders, the Perth Angels, to create a fast-paced and dramatic physical intervention in PICA’s central gallery.
Ever Higher Performances:
2 September, 6pm
16 September, 6pm, followed by In Conversation: Tarryn Gill & Pilar Mata Dupont
30 September, 6.30pm
15 October, 2pm
28 October, 4pm, special performance as part of the Commonwealth Festival for CHOGM.