The Sun and Its Relations: Artists Orbiting Artists

We work alongside, share histories, friends, colleagues, studios, knowledge, and gossip. We met in 2009–11 – sometime between 2012 and 2013 – we’ve just met. In carparks, corridors, foyers, workshops, galleries, theatres, and conferences, often in passing, we’d chat; shoes, dildoes, and Paris. ‘Grooving on the universe’.¹

I moved to Kamberri/Canberra. You were all in town. Lizzie called to have dinner. Everyone came. On a Monday night, the streets were empty, the food was terrible, the beer undrinkable. We laughed. I enjoyed your company. We didn’t talk about work.

Burnt out in a time of growing economic and social disparity, artists and arts workers tread water whilst being pitted against each other in an ever-decreasing pool of resources and support structures. I find it increasingly rare to be in the company of my peers without talking about work and survival.

A short time after the dinner Rochelle Haley reached out to ask if I’d like to write a response to A Sun Dance.

A Sun Dance was developed over a two-year period, commissioned by the National Gallery, and funded by Creative Australia and as a case-study within the three-year Australian Research Council – Linkage project, Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2021–24). Support and renumeration for the artists in this project is perhaps one of two reasons why our dinner conversations move beyond labour and despair. The other is time. Having the opportunity to work together for a long period, there is a warmth and generosity that flows amongst this group, across the dinner table, throughout rehearsals and into the performance that fills the National Gallery.

A Sun Dance by artist Rochelle Haley, working with choreographers Angela Goh and Ivey Wawn, is a day-long durational performance that responds in the moment to the changing light in the building. Whilst the artwork responds to site and is informed by the building, it’s not anchored to the National Gallery or contingent on this particular location to exist. A Sun Dance brings an established practice that incorporates multiple layers of choreography, which in turn produces what Haley calls a ‘site-harmonising’ artwork.³

Over the period of a day, from open to close, five dancers (Angela Goh, David Huggins, Lizzie Thomson, Niki Verrall and Ivey Wawn) meticulously weave through exhibition spaces, touching, holding, and stretching sunlight as it disperses through the architecture of the National Gallery of Australia. The industrial music was composed and performed live by Megan Alice Clune, who listened to and harmonised with existing sounds and materials. She plays the building like an instrument. Similarly, hand dyed fabric and costumes designed by Leah Giblin coordinate with the light and shapes reflected in the architecture. The performance highlights the cathedral-like atmosphere often associated with the National Gallery.

For seven and a half hours an unwavering, non-stop choreography disrupts usual perceptions of time by challenging the use of the architecture and the threshold between interior and exterior. The audience is free to follow the performance as it travels between galleries for as little or long as they like. This processional slowing down of attention affords me the time and opportunity to notice what is around me. I get lost, forget where I am, who I’m with and then, with a wink of eye, a clang of a railing, am found again. I bump into current and former friends, colleagues and students. I notice my relationship to the museum, its collection, culture, and community gathered under the sun, at this point in time, on this surface, once only, as if watching an eclipse: a moment of totality.

Arriving from a campsite
I smell like an open fire.
The Sun, our local star
showing off

Who controls the Sun?

The Unconscious Sun
The Distant Sun
The Blonde Sun
The Hot Sun
The Good Sun
The Bad Sun
The Good Bad Sun
The Conscious Sun

Leaning into a duet the moon asks: “How’s your relationship?”
Seasonally disordered, earth changing, earth shattering. There is darkness at noon. I am yearning for light. Changes are small.

A shadow in precise alignment, in a path of totality.
Some of the audience miss this moment completely. Like Edmund Halley’s observation of his peers, “they were opprest by too much company, so that, though the heavens were very favourable, yet he miss’d both the time of the Beginning of the Eclipse and that of total darkness”.⁴

Behind the curve, make your way to the stairwell and do some orbiting until you hopefully come across someone you know. Look for friends through the gaps, place yourself. It’s a nice way to look around. Hovering in the middle of an apparition: past present and future networks.

Phases known

Stretching up
reaching out
your hand on my body
spooning
the sun makes time
out of sync
an angular bite
an orbital ray
a diamond ring effect
a moment of totality
the pit of the stomach
the gathering of selves
release
move away

wait for another perspective
angle for potential
switch
take the bait
it’s on
together
co-dependent
bored
angling for potential
available in an attractive way
move on

To function well you only need to pay attention to yourself as the apex of a triangle. Create your own orbit. Know who you’ve connected with, get what you want out of them, and then change when you find someone else, but you need to know when you’re caring and when you’re not.

So, let’s begin.
You arrive.

A Sun Dance is a performance by artist Rochelle Haley, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia 2023.