Sarah-Jane Norman

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Rest Area at Brisbane Festival, 12-13 September

In Residence, IndigeSpace, Performance Space Sydney, Aug-September 2011

News

In Residence, IndigeSpace, Performance Space at Carriageworks, Sydney.From August 15 to September 4, 2011, Sarah-Jane Norman will be in Residence at Performance Space, Carriageworks, as one of two artists selected for the new IndigeSpace Initiative. During the residency she will be developing a new cycle of works , UnSettling Suite. This will include further development of the 2010 work Take this, for it is my Body, as well as the forthcoming Bone Library and Mrs Macquarie's Chamber.About UnSettling Suite:From the perspective of a 20th century Australian of mixed British and Aboriginal descent, Sarah-Jane Norman considers the complex legacy of colonialism as an embodied phenomena.A three way dialogue between body, material, and history, Unsettling Suite is a cycle of performance works, each centered around a material focus on one of seven household substances: flour, sugar, wool, tea, meat, cotton and milk. These substances, which gave reason to the project of European Colonialism, remain the cornerstones of our everyday sustenance. How then, might history be considered not as a record of past events, but as a living entity to which our bodies play host?Within the formal constraints imposed by these simple materials, Norman seeks a vocabulary for articulating her own experience as a descendent of both coloniser and colonised. The artist considers what it means to be "mixed" how does the so-called ³half-caste² continue to destabilize the assumptions of the dominant culture? how may binaries, of blackand white, grief and responsibility, them and us, then and now, be collapsed in the presence of such a complicated body? How is our blood itself owned by the cultural moment, and judged as either a source of shame or pride, acontaminant or a vital serum?Sarah-Jane will be working with a team of peer collaborators during the residency towards the completion of the works and the collation of material for an artist's book. Rest Area goes to Brisbane Festival, September 12-13This seminal work will be travelling to Brisbane for the first time as part of the 2011 Brisbane Festival program.For more information, or to book tickets, visit the Brisbane Festival Website.
WORK

rest area

Take this for it is my Body

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hokum 2009

songs of rapture and torture

loom 2009

The New Barbarians

The Suspense is Killing Me

Old Country (Cyclorama)

Wretch Hitches a Ride

BIO

Article 1

BIO

Sarah-Jane Norman is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer, originally fron Sydney, Australia.Her practice is grounded in performance. As such, her core interest is in the body: the body as a spectacle of truth and a theatre of fantasy; a siphon of personal and collective memory; an organism with which we are infinitely familiar and eternally estranged; a site which is equally loaded and empty of meaning, where histories, narratives, desires and discourses converge and collapse.She is known in Australia and abroad for her body of intimate work, such as Rest Area (2006), Songs of Rapture and Torture (2007-20110) and Take this, for it is my Body (2010). Each of these works is crafted for a single audience member at a time, and represent the artists long term commitment to durational and one-to-one forms, which form the central axis of her working methodology. These works are site-driven and take place in a range of unlikely locations: the back of stationary trucks, darkened hotel rooms, former prison cells, coal cellars and empty shopfronts. Works such as Rest Area and Songs of Rapture and Torture indicate a sometime preoccupation with cultural tropes of romantic love, transience and the interplay of desire and loneliness. Take this, for it is my Body uses the same formal range to explore the very different territory of race and colonial trauma. An Australian artist of mixed British and Indigenous Australian heritage (with ties to both Wannarua and Wiradjuri Nations), her latest body of work is preoccupied with the complex legacy of colonialism as an embodied phenomena.Aside from her performance practice she works in a range of other media, and is known as a writer of fiction, essays and poetry. Her work has been published in a number or national and international journals (Meanjin, Overland, Stylus, The Cultural Studies Review, the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) Quarterly and Realtime to name a few) as well as placing in a number of awards including the Overland/Judith Wright Prize for poetry and the DJ (Dinny) O'Hearn Award. She was also the assistant editor on the book Dreaming in Motion: Celebrating Australias Indigenous Filmmakers, a co-production of Realtime Inc and Screen Australia. She grew up in Sydney and Regional NSW, has lived in the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, and currently divides her time between Berlin and Regional NSW.

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CV

Sarah-Jane Normanb. 1984, Sydney, AustraliaLives and works in Berlin, Germany and Katoomba, Australia Qualifications and Training2007Associate student of Fine Art, Dartington College, Dartington.2004-2009BA Arts in Communication (Writing and Cultural Studies), sub-majoring in Photomedia and German. University of Technology, Sydney.2006-2008.Ongoing training in improvisation with Martin Del Amo2006Dairakudakan Gasshuku, residential intensive in Butoh and Noguchi Taiso with Dairakudakan. Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.Training in Butoh with Yoshito Ohno at the Kazuo Ohno Studio, Yokohama, Japan.Training in Bodywheather/Butoh with De Quincey Co.2005Impact Ensemble member. Intensive 9-month program in Body/Voicework and performance devising for emerging artists.Training in Feldenkrais and Suzuki Method with Christopher Ryan. Selected Performances and Exhibitions2011Unsettling Suite. Performance cycle, in development, Performance Space, Sydney.Songs of Rapture and Torture 1-4. performance cycle, video. Serial Space, Sydney.2010Take this, for it is my Body . One-to-one performance., InBetweenTime Festival Arnolfini, Bristol.Rest Area One-to-One performance. Cruel Sluts exhibtion, Berlin.Frida and Anita Film performance, (dir. Liz Rosenfeld). BerlinSongs of Rapture and Torture #3 (Never Tear Us Apart) One-to-One performance. Site-Specific (DeVere Hotel, Kings Cross), Sydney.2009The Visitation Durational performance. Site specific (Old Paddington Conservatives Club), LondonHokum Perfomances for Super 8. GlogauAIR, Berlin.Loom Durational performance. Performers Stammtisch, GlogauAIR, BerlinSurvive/Suspend Durational performance, Gestalt Festival, GlogauAIR, berlinUnsettling suite 1 (introduction/white sleep) Durational performance, Gestalt festival, GlogauAIR, BerlinSongs of Rapture and Torture #2 (Dont Leave Me This Way) 4-channel video performance. Quick and Dirty, Performance Space, Sydney.Rest Area One-to-One performance. Tiny Stadiums Festival, Sydney.2008Songs of Rapture and Torture #1 (Surabaya Johnny), One-to-One performance. Liveworks, Performance Space, Sydney.Songs of Rapture and Torture #1 (Surabaya Johnny), This is Not Art, Newcastle.Songs of Rapture and Torture #1 (Surabaya Johnny), Quick and Dirty, Performance Space, Sydney.Longing and its Double: on distance, intimacy, and the idea of home. Writer/initiating artist, performance for radio/new media. with collaborators/contributing artists: Richard Hancock, Brian Fuata, Doll Yoko, Steve Robins, Kate Rowles, Vanessa Berry, Keri Glastonbury, and Martin Del Amo.Revolting, Performance intervention with Fiona McGregor at the Sydney Biennale, Art Gallery of NSW.2007The New Barbarians, with Guillermo Gomez Pena and La Pocha Nostra, Arnolfini, Bristol.Title:Native. Performance installation, Arnolfini, Bristol, UKRest Area, Nighttime #4, Performance Space, Sydney.Old Country (cyclorama) performance installation, I Am Your Worst Nightmare, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol.Constellations (Dir. Karen Therese), Performer/writer, Seymour Centre, Sydney.There Where You Are Not Photographs and work-on-paper. Dartington College of the Arts, UKSSAE (only/connect), works-on-paper. The Postcard Show (group exhibition), Surface Gallery, Nottingham.2006Urban Typhoon, Interventions, with ArtHarbour Collective, Tokyo.Defined in Negatives Performance text, in collaboration with Keri Glastonbury, for Barbara Campbells 1001 Nights. http://1001.net.au/Prompt/909Constellations Performer/writer. PACT Theatre. Performance Space, Sydney.2005Before the Lx Go Out (Dir. Regina Heilmann) performer. PACT theatre. The Studio, Sydney Opera House, Sydney.Un-Sleeping, Performance text. All in the Mind, ABC Radio NationalConstellations performer/writer. New Mardi Gras Festival, PACT Theatre, SydneyGrants, Awards and Residencies2011IndigeSpace artist in residence, Performance Space, Sydney2009Artist in Residence, GlogauAIR, Berlin, May-Aug 2009Overland/Judith Wright Prize for poetry, 1st runner up.2007Australia Council New Work Grant (Literature)Australia Council Write in Your Face grant (Literature)Overland/Judith Wright Prize 1st runner upAustralia Centre Literary Awards (DJ OHearn Prize), Highly Commended.2006QANTAS/Noise SOYA Awards, finalist. Papers, talks and Symposia2011Do It for Longer: an artists dicussion on durational performance practice. Serial Space, Sydney.2008Contemporary Artists and the Spaces In-Between, panellist, This is Not Art, Newcastle.Feminism, Aesthetics and the Body, facilitator, This is Not Art, Newcastle.2007Atrocity Exhibition, research paper, presented at Writing the Unwritable, Critical Animals Creative Research Symposium, This Is Not Art Festival, Newcastle, Australia, Sept 19-20Body Trouble: Body Art and Performance, facilitator, Critical Animals Creative Research Symposium, This Is Not Art Festival, Newcastle, Australia, Sept 19-202006UrbanTyphoon Symposium Collaborator/facilitator, ArtHarbour collective, , Shimokitazawa, Tokyo. June 26-July 2, 2006. www.urbantyphoon.com/harbour/team.htm2004UTS Writers Festival Panelist, Zinemakers panel, Sydney. Publications (variously authored as Sarah-Jane Norman, Sarah Norman and SJ Norman)2011A Quantitative Theory of Intimacy: on thresholds, flesh and sacred mathematics, POINT Issue #42010Images of Surgery, poem, Overland.2009Open Water, poems Overland, no.1932008A Vanishing City, poem, Overland, no.193This is the Hikari Super-Express, poem, Overland, no.1932007Dreaming in Motion: Celebrating Australias Indigenous Filmmakersreference book, assistant editor/writer. Realtime/OpenCity Publications in collaboration with the Australian Film Commission2006Untying the Old School, essay, Australian Cultural Studies review, vol.13, no.1Poem for two voices providing one of them is Annie Lennox, poem, Meanjin, vol.66, no.2Ryokan Ohto, poem, Meanjin, vol.66, no.1Permafrost, fiction, in Making Tracks 2006 UTS Anthology2005The Art of 5-Minute Statements, review, Realtime Magazine no. 67, Jun/Jul 2005.Dictionary of Sleep, fiction, Nine Tenths Below, UTS Writers Anthology.This Melancholy Princess, poem, in Nine Tenths Below, UTS Writers Anthology.QueerLittleFish #2: Todays Falling Literary Stars!, Zine (Dist. Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo)QueerLittleFish #3: A Rapid Something, Zine (Dist. Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo)Untitled, fiction, Vertigo Magazine, iss. 2, Night10 Beds, photo essay/article, Vertigo Magazine, iss.2 NightThe Beginners Guide to Industrial Slaughter, feature article, Vertigo Magazine, iss.3:DIYNaoshima: Art-Loving Island Life, feature article Vertigo Magazine, iss. 6: Paradise2004Outback Hip-Hop Hybrid, review, Realtime Magazine no. 62We Are an Empire in Decline, poems, online publication, Noise Festival, www.noise.net.auQueerLittleFish #1: Public Love, or the vindicationof the right to loiter, Zine (Dist. Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo)

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PRESS ARCHIVE

"Sarah-Jane Norman has a reputation as one of Sydney's most provocative and magnetic performance artists..." Hilary Simmons on Songs of Rapture and Torture- Concrete playground- April 2011Artist Profile, National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) Quarterly, September 2011 Two Thousand, April 2011- Songs of Rapture and Torture at Serial Space- by Bethany SmallTime Out Sydney- April 2011- Spotlight on... Sarah-Jane NormanSydney Morning Herald- Spectrum, Feb 12-13 2011- article by Louise SchwartzkopffRealtime Magazine -Special Feature- Oswunnmi on Take this, for it is My BodyDas Superpaper- Issue 11- Featuring an interview by Sam Icklow and cover images by Christa HolkaRealTime 84 April-May 2008- David Williams on Quick and Dirty "Saturday saw the exquisite intimacy of Sarah-Jane Normans Songs of Rapture and Torture (#1: Surabaya Johnny). After a long wait to be singly admitted, I entered to find Norman sitting naked, blindfolded and elaborately bound to a chair, singing huskily in German into a microphone dangling from the ceiling. Clearly, Id arrived in the middle of some ordeal. After about five mesmerising and strangely anxious minutes, the door opened and I was politely ushered out. Norman continued to sing, lost in a private world of loss, pain and resignation. Despite the brief encounter, the powerful image lingered." Realtime 83 Feb-Mar 2008- Power Dressing- Tim Attack vibrates to the art of La Pocha Nostra

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