The Performance Collective
The Performance Collective is a group of five leading artists in Irish performance art: Michelle Browne, Alex Conway, Pauline Cummins, Frances Mezzetti and Dominic Thorpe. They have made work for numerous contexts and worked along side many performance artists, including members of Belfast based Bbeyond. Central to their process of working is a focus on improvisation. They address key questions central to much contemporary visual art; collaboration, co-authorship, improvisation, context, display, the live and temporary. They continue to develop new methodologies for simultaneously creating and presenting live, improvised visual art, responding to and evolving each performance at the time of its presentation. They explore collective authorship and the development of collective voice. They look at how improvisation and collective expression are used in other art forms and apply this to the development and understanding of visual art. In 2012 The Performance Collective presented 14 days of live performance as part of the Galway Arts festival in Galway Arts Centre. For more information go to
www.theperformancecollective.com
Michelle Browne is an artist and curator based in Dublin. Much of her work is performance based and she has performed and exhibited both nationally and internationally most recently taking part in Labour, London, Derry, Dublin; Quantified Self, Dublin; Transmuted International Performance Festival, Mexico; Right Here Right Now Irish Performance Art, Dublin; Trouble Performance Festival, Belgium, and a solo show in the Lab in 2011. In 2009 she curated Vital Signs, an exhibition of arts and health in context for the Arts Council and Create and she was the 2010 curator of TULCA a season of visual art in Galway. Michelle is currently Artist Advisor on the design team for the Grafton Street Quarter Improvement Scheme.
Alex Conway, originally from the west of Ireland, is based in Dublin. He completed his MFA in 2008 at NCAD. He has shown nationally and internationally including, Varna Contemporary Bulgaria, URA Turkey, Right Here Right Now, Irish Performance Art, Dublin 2010, Fix 07 Belfast, Tulca Galway, Out of Site Dublin, Terminal Convention Cork and Excursions Limerick.
Pauline Cummins is an artist whose work explores the human condition from a feminist perspective. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. She presented her new video work and performance, Sound the Alarm 4, in Victoria, Canada, in September 2010. She took part in Labour, Dublin/Istanbul, London and Derry in 2012, Right Here Right Now Irish Performance Art in Kilmainham Jail in 2011 and in 2012 she presented her work alongside her longtime collaborator Sandra Vida at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris. In October 2012 she performed 'Water/Leopard' at the Mountain Standard Time festival in Calgary.
Frances Mezzetti graduated in NCAD 1998 with a BA hons. in Fine Art Sculpture. Her work examines the connection of the human subject with the local environment. Performances included Labour Live Exhibition of performance by Irish female artists , The Big Jam in Catalyst Belfast, supported by VAI, The Potential of Vacancy, curated by Sinead McCann, and two live shows in Temple Bar Studios, Right Here, Right Now, and the ongoing series of performances Walking in the Way, with Pauline Cummins in Belfast, London, Derry, Dublin and Edinburgh, where gender construction is explored. In 2011 she graduated with an MSc in Art Psychotherapy in Queen Margaret University, Scotland.
Dublin based artist Dominic Thorpe has shown work extensively in Ireland and internationally including performing at the Bergen Museum of Art Norway, the Guangzhou Festival of Live Art China, the Infr'Action Performance Art Festival Venice, Templebar Gallery Dublin and the Tulca Visual Arts Festival Galway. He has completed public art commissions for the Wicklow County Counclil, the DunLaoghaire County Council and the Finglas Suicide Network. In 2010 he co-curated the Irish performance art exhibition 'right here - right now' at Kilmainham Jail Dublin and in 2011/12 developed a public art module 'Sharing Space' at the Ballyfermot Senior College.