Overview

The work of Shelley Lasica reveals a sustained exploration of dance, movement and the varying contexts in which they can occur. WHEN I AM NOT THERE has been produced to accompany a performance exhibition reflecting on forty years of Lasica’s choreographic practice. Held at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (15–27 August 2022), WHEN I AM NOT THERE is the first Australian survey of its kind. Centring on a new ensemble work that Melbourne-based Lasica has developed with a team of ten other artists – Lydia Connolly-Hiatt, Luke Fryer, Timothy Harvey, Rebecca Jensen, Megan Payne, Lisa Radford, Lana Šprajcer, Oliver Savariego, François Tétaz and Colby Vexler – it also presents components from Lasica’s archive of earlier works, including costuming, objects, soundscapes and text. Consolidating ideas and experiments that Lasica has been developing throughout her career, WHEN I AM NOT THERE contributes to discussions around choreography in the gallery space and activates the tension between what it means ‘to perform’ and ‘to exhibit’. Edited by the project’s curator, Hannah Mathews, in conversation with Lasica, this substantial monograph is the first to be published on an Australian choreographer. It provides a comprehensive account of Lasica’s performance and exhibition history and uncovers extensive documentation from the artist’s archive, alongside contributions by writers Erin Brannigan, Justin Clemens, Claudia La Rocco, Robyn McKenzie and Zoe Theodore. Shelley Lasica is a 2021 recipient of an Australia Council Dance Fellowship. WHEN I AM NOT THERE is realised as part of Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum, an ARC research project that involves the following partners: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; MUMA, Melbourne; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Tate, UK; and UNSW Sydney. The exhibition and book provides this overarching project with critical and situated research focused on the curation and practice of choreography in the museum environment.

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Hannah Mathews is Senior Curator at Monash University Museum of Art, where her recent projects include Vivienne Binns: On and through the Surface (2022), Dale Harding: Through a Lens of Visitation (2021), Agatha Gothe-Snape: The Outcome Is Certain (2020) and Shapes of Knowledge (2019). Mathews has held curatorial positions at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts; Next Wave Festival, Melbourne; and the Biennale of Sydney. She has edited numerous publications and is currently a chief investigator on the ARC Linkage Grant Precarious Movements: Choreography in the Museum. Erin Brannigan is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of New South Wales. She is of Irish and Danish political exile, convict and settler descent. Her current research project is Precarious Movements: Dance and the Museum, and monographs associated with this project: Choreography, Visual Art and Experimental Composition 1950s–1970s (Routledge, 2022) and The Persistence of Dance: Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art (Michigan University Press, forthcoming). Justin Clemens writes extensively about Australian art and culture. His books include Limericks, Philosophical and Literary (Surpllus, 2019) and Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy (Edinburgh, 2013). His monograph on the early colonial Australian judge Barron Field, written with T.H. Ford, will be out soon with Melbourne University Press. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. Claudia La Rocco’s books include the pamphlet Quartet (Ugly Duckling Presse); the selected writings The Best Most Useless Dress (Badlands Unlimited); and petit cadeau, a novel published in live, digital and print editions by the Chocolate Factory Theater in New York. With musician/composer Phillip Greenlief, she is animals & giraffes, an ongoing experiment in multidisciplinary improvisation. She has been a columnist for Artforum and a cultural critic for WNYC New York Public Radio. From 2005 to 2015 she was a critic and reporter for The New York Times. Robyn McKenzie originally trained in Art History. She has an established reputation as a writer on contemporary Australian art. After undertaking further study in Anthropology (in the Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Research Program at the Australian National University), her interests have focussed on ways of engaging with and re-activating historical museum collections, specifically of First Nations material culture in Australian and Pacific collections. She continues to engage with and write on contemporary art. Zoe Theodore is a Sydney-based curator, producer and writer, with a particular interest in the relationship between performance, choreography and the gallery. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of New South Wales and the Project Coordinator of Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum. She was the co-editor of Dissect Journal’s third issue and has held professional roles at Anna Schwartz Gallery and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; and MoMA PS1, New York.

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