Arts House, wide awake

From hip hop to flocking; sustainable development to dark ecology; post-disaster investigations and interactive bondage – Arts House presents a program of performances, installations and artistic interventions that will captivate, provoke and connect us to the world, and each other.

In Season 1, international artists join forces with Australian and First Nations artists to create an electrifying program of works within three ambitious festivals – Asia TOPA, Dance Massive and YIRRAMBOI.

For Asia TOPA, we welcome dancer/choreographer Daniel Kok (Singapore) in collaboration with Melbourne’s Luke George; and from Japan, docu-performance mavericks Hamanaka Company along with Toshiki Okada’s chelfitsch.

Dance Massive blows the lid off contemporary dance with ten extraordinary works; we welcome hip hop artist Nick Power in collaboration with Cambodia’s Tiny Toones, Australian/Maori performer Victoria Hunt, trans-media experimentalist Shian Law, choreographer/dancer James Batchelor, Bundjalung/Yaegl artist Mariaa Randall, and the renowned Lucy Guerin Inc. Lz Dunn offers an exploration of bird flocking and queer ecology;

Rebecca Jensen takes us into the abyss; The Farm re-enact The Office; and Nat Cursio learns to skateboard.

YIRRAMBOI, a celebration of First Nations artists from Australia and afar, sees Yup’ik artist Emily Johnson (Alaska) join Wiradjuri writer and activist Hannah Donnelly, and Worimi filmmaker and storyteller Genevieve Grieves reframe our future.

To round off a brilliant start to 2017, Bristol’s live-art performance duo Action Hero are our Company in Residence, presenting three works never seen before in Australia.

And that’s just the part you get to see up front. Bubbling below the surface is a whole range of works in development, including: Water Futures, a three-day hackathon with artists and scientists from across the Asia Pacific; our ongoing artist-led response to climate change, Refuge; the 2nd Indigenous Choreographic Residency; Arts House’s research and development incubator CultureLAB; Listening Program artist residencies; and our 4 Walls initiative, offering access to much-needed rehearsal spaces.

All of which ensures that no matter what challenges we face, artists will continue to make extraordinary art about important issues on their own terms. And Arts House will continue to support them.

Welcome to Arts House Season 1.

Angharad Wynne-Jones
Artistic Director