Heather B. Swann

Nervous

Exhibition
18 Aug – 20 Nov 2016
A woman looking up at the camera while working at a table

Artist Heather B. Swann at work in her studio 2016 © Heather B. Swann

About

Heather B. Swann's Nervous is live performance and art installation, creating a multidisciplinary arts experience of intense emotional states.

A collective comprising the sculptor, a poet, a composer, two instrumental ensembles and two vocalists have spent two years shaping the expanded project in two modalities: as live performance, and as an installation to be displayed at the NGA. Nervous will be inaugurated with two exciting, live presentations, followed by a longer installation phase, with occasional 'pop-up' performances.

The live performance of Nervous will be like nothing you have ever experienced before. Spinning out of the theme of intense and extreme emotional states of being, you will be welcomed into a performative arena that is conceived by the artist as 'the Mental'. The audience, the sculptures, the performance and the musicians will all be on one level. The audience will be seated on chairs or standing, close to the Banksia Men and the other sculptures, with the musicians in the middle of the performance. Swann says, 'The audience will be inside this Mental, inside the brain as it feels and experiences a range of emotions embodied in the sculptures, abstracted by the music, felt by all'. This will be an extraordinary, multidisciplinary performance not to be missed.

Text sourced from: Swann, Heather B., Kirsty Morrison, and Deborah Hart. Nervous. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2016.

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