Performance in Dialogue: A Sun Dance

Free, bookings essential.
Duration: 60 mins including Q&A.

Join artist Rochelle Haley, choreographers and dancers Angela Goh and Ivey Wawn, Louise Lawson (Head of Conservation, Tate) and Deirdre Cannon (Assistant Curator, Australian Art) in conversation to celebrate the premiere of the new performance commission, A Sun Dance.

This conversation will focus on the painterly and collaborative choreographic approach Haley employed in the development of A Sun Dance, as well as how artists and museums might work together to present, document, collect and conserve performance works.

A Sun Dance is a free, ticketed performance, presented on Saturday 24 February 2024.

Rochelle Haley is an artist and Senior Lecturer at University of New South Wales, School of Art & Design, Sydney, who engages with painting and choreography to explore relationships between moving bodies and physical environments. Her painting installation and performance works explore intersections between colour, gesture and light, discovering harmonies between audiences, performers and architectures. Haley is interested in painterly and choreographic modes of composition, experimenting with abstract form and colour embodying temporality within space. Haley is a chief investigator for the research project Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2021-2024).

Louise Lawson is Head of Conservation at Tate. In this role she is responsible for the leadership and strategic direction, development and delivery of Conservation at Tate. Her recent research has focused on the conservation of performance-based artworks, through leading the project Documentation and Conservation of Performance at Tate (2016–2021) and through her participation in Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum (2018–2021). She has shared learning from these projects via lectures, presentations and academic publications. Her current research project as a Partner Investigator is Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2021-2024).

Ivey Wawn is a dancer based on Gadigal Land (Inner Sydney). She makes performances mainly for live audiences in art gallery and theatre contexts. She also contributes regularly to the work of other artists as a performer/collaborator and owns and operates a restaurant in Redfern with friends.

Angela Goh is an artist who works with dance and choreography. Her work is presented across contemporary art contexts and traditional performance spaces in leading institutions around the world. She lives on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia.

Deirdre Cannon is Assistant Curator, Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia. Deirdre co-curated the performance work, A Sun Dance, in collaboration with Elspeth Pitt (Senior Curator, Australian Art).