Sightings

Gabrielle Nankivell

Incubator Residency
Commissioned by Vitalstatistix

Gabrielle Nankivell’s Sightings explores personal and collective mythologies of place through crowd-sourced mapping and storytelling, choreographed site interventions, video works, documentation and public performance.

Drawing on Gabrielle’s Arts South Australia Fellowship, which is exploring choreographic strategies for documenting personal and artistic lineage/ancestry, Sightings extends this line of enquiry to specific communities.

First trialled as a community workshop in Port Pirie in 2019 with Country Arts SA, Sightings will develop as a site-specific performance making model, with substantial potential for regional and other touring.

This residency will explore conceptual material from ideas around discovery, colonialism and unreliable narratives of place, through to acts of public sightings, new archival practices and public choreography. Vitalstatistix’s home Port Adelaide is a rich location for the creative development of this work.

How to participate:

Gabrielle’s aim is to create maps and myths that help explore connection to story and place. They are keen to discover the local area through the history and imagination of its residents. They are curious about how creativity can connect people as a community – be that temporary or long standing.

Visit the project website HERE to contribute.

  1. Choose a location in Port Adelaide significant to you.
  2. Tell them about your connection to this place/why you chose it.
  3. Send them on an adventure to find it by creating and uploading a map. Use whatever means suits the task – describe, draw, photograph etc.

Originally intended to be presented in a double bill with the development of Amrita Hepi’s The Read as part of our Incubator residency program/ mini dance lab, the residency and showing of The Read has been cancelled due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. The presentation of Sightings will continue as scheduled.

Creative team: Gabrielle Nankivell with Harrison Elliott, Jack Ziesing, Luke Smiles and Jonathan Oxlade

Image: Luke Smiles