Julia Bardsley
AFTERMATHS: a tear in the meat of vision
play video >
performance: duration 65 mins; video documentation above – 66 mins
From the original Festival website:
From the dazzling heights of the apocalyptic catwalk, from amongst the glorious atrocities of the plagues, from the sumptuousness of the furniture of dis-ease, from within the abandoned mourning mass – the spectacular fe/male host/ess emerges, preaching The Doctrine of Last Things.
Witness a display of secreting surfaces, wounded landscapes, curtains of skin and hair, mutating bodies, fragments of meat, merchandise and money.
A bacchanalian reading of Revelations, played out in a dark arena for ritual and rapture, AFTERMATHS licks the pulse of the congregation’s flesh and glories in the catastrophe of End Time.
AFTERMATHS is the final part of The Divine Trilogy, a promenade performance exploring notions of prophecy, excess, capitalism and ecstasy.
As audience members you are requested to wear black & become part of this congregation of carnivalesque mourning. Please bring with you a small black object (no bigger than 4cm), with which you are willing to part. Let the happy endings commence!
Created & performed by Julia Bardsley with sound score & live mix by Andrew Poppy. Strobe lighting will be used during the show.
“Bardsley is a really fascinating artist… She could have been running the National Theatre by now but instead quite deliberately chose a different career path. In recent years she has been making inspired and unsettling work on the cusp between the theatre and the gallery.” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Julia has worked as a director, performer, filmmaker, photographer & visual artist. In 2005, as a result of a NESTA Fellowship, Julia set in motion a series of solo pieces collectively entitled The Divine Trilogy – Trans-Acts, Almost The Same (feral rehearsals for violent acts of culture) & Aftermaths: a tear in the meat of vision. Parts of the trilogy have been presented at the NRLA – ’05/’08/’10; Trouble Festival #1 & #5, Brussels; SPILL Festival ’07/’09, Karnart, Lisbon, Sacred at Chelsea Theatre, Queer Zagreb, Croatia, City of Women Festival, Ljubljana & S.P.A.C.E. UK, Gijon, Spain. Julia was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Middlesex University in 2007 and is an Artsadmin Associate Artist. juliabardsley.co.uk
A student of Goldsmith College and John Cage, Julia’s collaborator Andrew Poppy was composer/pianist with The Lost Jockey a ground breaking electric chamber orchestra in the early 1980s. He has an eclectic body of work including piano, orchestral & electronic music. His first CD The Beating of Wings (ZTT 1984) includes performances of 32 Frames for Orchestra (recently performed at the QEH by BBC Concert Orchestra) and the sample-based Listening In. Collaboration has been an important part of an unusual body of work. Most recently Andrew has been performing And the Shuffle of Things. myspace.com/andrewpoppy
Julia & Andrew run HIGH BRIDGE projects, an umbrella organisation that encompasses their various creative outputs.
A co-commission by New Moves International for New Territories 2010, SPILL Festival, Les Halles/Trouble #5 Festival and La Bellone – in the framework of the European project ‘A Space for Live Art’ with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Commission. Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
From the original Festival website:
From the dazzling heights of the apocalyptic catwalk, from amongst the glorious atrocities of the plagues, from the sumptuousness of the furniture of dis-ease, from within the abandoned mourning mass – the spectacular fe/male host/ess emerges, preaching The Doctrine of Last Things.
Witness a display of secreting surfaces, wounded landscapes, curtains of skin and hair, mutating bodies, fragments of meat, merchandise and money. A bacchanalian reading of Revelations, played out in a dark arena for ritual and rapture, AFTERMATHS licks the pulse of the congregation’s flesh and glories in the catastrophe of End Time. AFTERMATHS is the final part of The Divine Trilogy, a promenade performance exploring notions of prophecy, excess, capitalism and ecstasy.
As audience members you are requested to wear black & become part of this congregation of carnivalesque mourning. Please bring with you a small black object (no bigger than 4cm), with which you are willing to part. Let the happy endings commence!
Created & performed by Julia Bardsley with sound score & live mix by Andrew Poppy. Strobe lighting will be used during the show.
“Bardsley is a really fascinating artist… She could have been running the National Theatre by now but instead quite deliberately chose a different career path. In recent years she has been making inspired and unsettling work on the cusp between the theatre and the gallery.” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Julia has worked as a director, performer, filmmaker, photographer & visual artist. In 2005, as a result of a NESTA Fellowship, Julia set in motion a series of solo pieces collectively entitled The Divine Trilogy – Trans-Acts, Almost The Same (feral rehearsals for violent acts of culture) & Aftermaths: a tear in the meat of vision. Parts of the trilogy have been presented at the NRLA – ’05/’08/’10; Trouble Festival #1 & #5, Brussels; SPILL Festival ’07/’09, Karnart, Lisbon, Sacred at Chelsea Theatre, Queer Zagreb, Croatia, City of Women Festival, Ljubljana & S.P.A.C.E. UK, Gijon, Spain. Julia was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Middlesex University in 2007 and is an Artsadmin Associate Artist. juliabardsley.co.uk
A student of Goldsmith College and John Cage, Julia’s collaborator Andrew Poppy was composer/pianist with The Lost Jockey a ground breaking electric chamber orchestra in the early 1980s. He has an eclectic body of work including piano, orchestral & electronic music. His first CD The Beating of Wings (ZTT 1984) includes performances of 32 Frames for Orchestra (recently performed at the QEH by BBC Concert Orchestra) and the sample-based Listening In. Collaboration has been an important part of an unusual body of work. Most recently Andrew has been performing And the Shuffle of Things. myspace.com/andrewpoppy
Julia & Andrew run HIGH BRIDGE projects, an umbrella organisation that encompasses their various creative outputs.
A co-commission by SPILL ’09 and New Moves International for New Territories 2010, Les Halles/Trouble #5 Festival and La Bellone – in the framework of the European project ‘A Space for Live Art’ with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Commission. Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.