Future Turf is a performance installation exploring the relationship between the built environment, home and the human form. The concept of ‘home’ is ever-changing and contested globally. Home ownership in Australia is at its lowest point since the 1950s, and one-third of the three billion inhabitants of the world’s cities and towns live in slums. Locally the politics of land ownership and home rub up against broad social concerns such as coal seam gas and mining exploration, the closure of remote Aboriginal communities and climate change.
Through this first creative development of Future Turf, the collaborating artists whose practices cross performance-making, text, dance and design, will explore these themes alongside the world of this new work and the performance of architecture and speculative futures.
Creative Team
Emily Stewart is a writer and a poet, whose recent work has been published in Feminartsy, Filmme Fatales, Overland and The Age. She is commissioning editor of Seizure, a platform for new Australian writing. Her second chapbook LIKE, released in May 2015, is available from Bulky News Press. In 2014 Emily was a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow and a resident artist at the Arteles Creative Centre, Finland. Her writing and installations have been performed at the Emerging Writers Festival, You Are Here and Critical Animals.
Emma Hall is a performer and theatre-maker whose most recent solo work We May Have to Choose was presented at the 2015 Adelaide Fringe. In 2014 she performed in Sarah Rodigari’s Reach Out Touch Faith, which won the Green Room Award for Best Contemporary and Experimental Performance. As a maker, Emma is influenced by theatre artists writing in new forms who investigate political issues of identity, ownership and power.
Henry Neville Wood is a sculptor from the Isle of Man now based in Melbourne. He works and builds intuitively, weaving ephemeral narratives into simple engaging semi totemic figures. His solo works have been exhibited across the Isle of Man, London and Los Angeles. He has also provided art direction assistance on a number of festival builds and corporate events with the company Bearded Kitten. In 2013 Henry took over a woodshop on the Island of Fjaderholmarna, Stockholm in Sweden.
Rachel Heller-Wagner is a choreographer and dancer who graduated from VCA in 2011. She has since worked across the country and is a founding member of Melbourne-based Menagerie collective. Rachel is currently undertaking an Artstart mentorship with Rosalind Crisp. She has been a recipient of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, which she used to facilitate extensive travel through the Middle East and Europe in late 2012.