GRETEL TAYLOR
  • Home
  • About
  • Current
  • performance
    • Restless
    • A Blind Date with Blind Creek
    • Mountain to Mouth
    • Freak of nature
    • Divining Melbourne
    • Dances with Lyrebirds
    • Body of Water
    • Material Girl
    • Settling In/ It's MINE!
  • Video
    • Trespass
    • Scourge
    • Plateau
    • Hearth
    • Encroach
    • Still Landing
  • Curated projects
    • Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul
    • Poetics of Home
    • Dancing Between Two Worlds 2019
    • Force of Nature 2018
    • Dancing Place Wyndham 2016-17
    • Curtain Call, Glenorchy 2015-16
    • Flash Frogs! 2015
    • Scarecrows of Wyndham Vale 2014
    • Southern Ngalia 2009>
  • TEACHING
  • cv

CURTAIN CALL 

Picture
Curtain Call was an outcome of a workshop series based at Moonah Arts Centre, Glenorchy, Tasmania in late 2015, which explored experiences and perceptions of this place via walking, photography and text. Fifteen local residents of diverse cultural backgrounds and ages experimented with the inclusion of their own presence in the photographs - like a selfie but different! Sometimes this was via traces of their physical presence - such as shadows or reflections - and other times by photographing a personal object placed within the landscape.

This collaborative artwork was installed at Moonah Arts Centre, Tasmania, as part of the Glenorchy Open exhibition, February- April 2016.  It references (and hopes to contribute to obliterating!) the locally ingrained notion of the ‘Flannelette Curtain’, which attributes negative stereotypes to this place and the people who live here. According to many residents of Hobart, this ‘line’ runs along Creek Road, separating the latté drinkers on its southern side and flannelette shirt-wearers to its north. We believe this socially differentiating line is snobbish, unhelpful and simply inaccurate. This curtain comprised of multiple images of Glenorchy area taken by local residents aims to reveal nuances of life beyond the ‘curtain’.

 
The soundscape comprises text generated by participants from the embodied experience of walking around the area, with Situationist-inspired awareness of ‘psychogeographic’ effects. The written text was recorded spoken by the group members simultaneously to evoke the overlay of subjective and visceral observations of pedestrians in a Glenorchy street. These sounds form, in their indecipherable multiplicity, perhaps a more accurate representation of the complex social ‘fabric’ of the place than the stereotype of the Flannelette Curtain.


Curtain Call was an Art and About project as part of ARC Discovery research 'Challenging Stigma' led by sociologist Deborah Warr through Centre for Health Equity, University of Melbourne.  Gretel was employed as Artist/Research Fellow from 2014-17 and evolved a site-responsive social practice approach to challenge place-based stigma, develop a sense of belonging and inclusion within neighbourhoods and present nuanced perspectives of a place to outside audiences.  Gretel had long-term residencies in Wyndham (Victoria) and Hobart, in which she engaged groups of residents in Art and About projects reflecting upon their neighbourhoods and creating collaborative artistic outcomes.
BodyPlaceProject is based on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people in Corhanwarrabul/Dandenong Ranges and Narrm/Melbourne, and undertakes work in many other locations. We pay deep respect to First Nations elders past and present, who have listened to Country and danced, sung and told stories in and about their places for millennia, to share knowledge and to care for Country and people. ​
​They are the first site-specific artists!
  • Home
  • About
  • Current
  • performance
    • Restless
    • A Blind Date with Blind Creek
    • Mountain to Mouth
    • Freak of nature
    • Divining Melbourne
    • Dances with Lyrebirds
    • Body of Water
    • Material Girl
    • Settling In/ It's MINE!
  • Video
    • Trespass
    • Scourge
    • Plateau
    • Hearth
    • Encroach
    • Still Landing
  • Curated projects
    • Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul
    • Poetics of Home
    • Dancing Between Two Worlds 2019
    • Force of Nature 2018
    • Dancing Place Wyndham 2016-17
    • Curtain Call, Glenorchy 2015-16
    • Flash Frogs! 2015
    • Scarecrows of Wyndham Vale 2014
    • Southern Ngalia 2009>
  • TEACHING
  • cv