Queer Australian Art and KINK acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of the lands and waters of this continent. KINK conducts its work on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation in Naarm Melbourne, the Turrbal and Jagera peoples in Meanjin Brisbane and the Gadigal lands of the Eora Nation, Sydney. We pay respect to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded.

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Rest Area

2007

Description

"I first performed this work on a night in early summer in Sydney, in 2007. I dragged my own mattress and sheets off my bed and loaded them into the back of a 1 tonne baby Pantec, and parked it discreetly in a side-street in Darlington, outside the former Eveleigh Carriageworks. At the time, the building was in the early stages of its re-establishment as a performing arts venue, and home of the recently relocated Performance Space. It was hot and raining heavily. The truck leaked. I gave a few of my friends the task of discreetly handing out handwritten notes to randomly selected audience members who were milling in the foyer. The note said:

Now that I’ve found you, this is all I want from you. I've come a long way for this one thing. I want you to come in, I want you to lie down, I want you to hold me, just for a minute, just for you and just for me, just long enough to feel your breath on the back of my neck. The stars are out and the keys are in the ignition.

On the reverse side was an invitation and a set of directions to where the truck was parked. I waited for a long time in that leaky truck before people started showing up one at a time. They didn’t know what was going to happen when they entered, and neither did I.

This work started out as a small gesture, and a means of satisfying my own curiosities and desires. It was the first thing I ever made as a solo artist. It was an experiment, a confession, and a personal enquiry into my own loneliness and sense of recent loss."

SJ Norman

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View the 7 artworks tagged: Performance in the database.