artist / dancer / researcher / curator
Gretel is a freelance artist and curator with an ongoing deep interest in our relationships to place. She evolved an improvised dance practice, which she called 'locating' during her PhD (2009), as a mode of sensing, listening to and moving with the surrounding environment towards becoming present in a place. She is highly conscious of her presence as a woman of the white, privileged, colonising peoples, living and dancing upon ancient Indigenous Country in Australia. An ongoing theme through her performance works is the crossover between ecocide and colonisation.
As well as through site-responsive performances, Gretel continues to explore place and identity in ever-broadening ways through facilitation of projects and curation of programs and events that offer audiences and participants experiences of and reflections upon site, place and Country.
Gretel has lectured at Deakin, RMIT, Victoria University and Monash University in Performance Studies, Dance, Live Art and Performance. She has facilitated Body Weather training and site-specific performance-making workshops for over 15 years, currently leading Body Weather Naarm at Dancehouse, Narrm/Melbourne.
Through her role as Artist/Research Fellow at University of Melbourne (2014-17) and Deakin (2018-2020), she has investigated potentials at the juncture of site-specific art/performance and community cultural development through innovative creative research projects. Gretel has also recently taken roles within local government, bringing her passion for place-making to a community civic context through outdoor activation, museum exhibition curation and public art commissions.
Meanwhile she continues to create site-responsive works via her freelance projects. Current frequent collaborators include photographer Laki Sideris and Environmental Performance Authority (EPA).
Photo by Laki Sideris, Freak of Nature, Gretel Taylor and Kiki Ando, 2017
Gretel is a freelance artist and curator with an ongoing deep interest in our relationships to place. She evolved an improvised dance practice, which she called 'locating' during her PhD (2009), as a mode of sensing, listening to and moving with the surrounding environment towards becoming present in a place. She is highly conscious of her presence as a woman of the white, privileged, colonising peoples, living and dancing upon ancient Indigenous Country in Australia. An ongoing theme through her performance works is the crossover between ecocide and colonisation.
As well as through site-responsive performances, Gretel continues to explore place and identity in ever-broadening ways through facilitation of projects and curation of programs and events that offer audiences and participants experiences of and reflections upon site, place and Country.
Gretel has lectured at Deakin, RMIT, Victoria University and Monash University in Performance Studies, Dance, Live Art and Performance. She has facilitated Body Weather training and site-specific performance-making workshops for over 15 years, currently leading Body Weather Naarm at Dancehouse, Narrm/Melbourne.
Through her role as Artist/Research Fellow at University of Melbourne (2014-17) and Deakin (2018-2020), she has investigated potentials at the juncture of site-specific art/performance and community cultural development through innovative creative research projects. Gretel has also recently taken roles within local government, bringing her passion for place-making to a community civic context through outdoor activation, museum exhibition curation and public art commissions.
Meanwhile she continues to create site-responsive works via her freelance projects. Current frequent collaborators include photographer Laki Sideris and Environmental Performance Authority (EPA).
Photo by Laki Sideris, Freak of Nature, Gretel Taylor and Kiki Ando, 2017