Born out of the crisis and uncertainty of 2020, Exquisite Corps is an artist cohort-in-residence with Temperance Hall.
Supported with space and time as well as individual stipends, each Corps is self-organising and determines their own activity, process and outcomes. It may involve cooperative models, individual ideas and desires, growing and sharing artistic practice, artist network and collaboration building, creating work, experiments, performances, talks, workshops, documenting, archiving, and more.
Exquisite Corps 2020 is Amrita Hepi, Andrew Treloar, Benjamin Hurley, Harrison Hall, Luke Fryer, Emma Riches, Rachael Wisby, and Luke George (Temperance Hall Artistic Associate), who supports and cares for the Corps as a kind of ecologist and calibrator.
Update 28 January 2021
After a little break over the holidays the team gathered back in the space on January 14 to start their intensive takeover of the building. The building has been a hive of activity over the past week as the group have been exploring new and exciting ideas.
Their latest offerings are individual explorations that each artist has shared with the group from text-based graphics to video and mixed media drawing pieces, their responses are both provoking and visually engaging. Scroll below for a snapshot of their visual diaries - both IRL hard-copy creations and virtual offerings - with more updates in the coming days.
Credit: Rachael Wisby, Harrison Hall and Benjamin Hurley
Credit: Luke George
Credit: Andrew Treloar
Credit: Harrison Hall
Credit: Benjamin Hurley
Credit: Benjamin Hurley
Credit: Emma Riches
Credit: Rachael Wisby, this Q&A snapshot is linked to the following slide installations: Red Pill and He hates it when I bleed.
Credit: performance and video by Luke Fryer
Update, 7 December, 2020:
Exqiste Copps - Wed 18 Nov
miscals
Juliana hay - Folly
Nature Theatre otahanan
E moreal
2 Son
Phize merch
for president
Reptilian energy of politicians
-the braus
white collar crime
thrillingly boring
psychopathic cooperation
pointless Jobs
positions in the
corps
- greah gad
we need anarchy more dancers - somenon
ve
learning
Budrist chanting
gotheral cheating
Tina Turner
Mantis - tongue
Mantis technique e kempuise tanz
Brian Fuata a cruise
breathing apparatus/ trancalator
tracotomy
Sleep aprica reader voice
tuten kamer - 3D
dinner theatel
titanic/ wiches in britches.
Union
reinterpretation of Saté’s
have tried "
3.D prinsed
nomified cats (organ)
sing what we’re noticing
Screening goats
Taylor Swift
Enlivening the modere.
the pelies (hann in Cuba)
manto pelvis
Chopped screwed.
the hype in the background
com hack
Ashley Madsen
Bunker Hidin '
Leak. Batton
on nude leotard.
Tory Robins
tonged hart
gelled models - reptiles
acid art - faces,
face vegetables
sexy baby tiger
Beneton exotic
Deep fake
Cheet jaw surgey.
could be lesser oft
Imperfections - act of god
a construct to nett god acting
how do you mahe a mirade topper
the mirade that hapmor this week
google translate speaking tongues
Background and Further Info
The name of the project, Exquisite Corps, is taken from the French surrealist drawing or writing game, a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. For this project, instead of “corpse” it is “corps” (silent “p”) both a play on the corporate body, a body/group of people, and the human body itself.
The current Corps has been funded by Creative Victoria, and will operate at Temperance Hall until the end of March 2021. Each artist receives a stipend and an allocation of studio space at Temperance Hall to use however they would like. The Corps is self-organising and determines their own activity, process and outcomes—collectively and individually, e.g. creation of new work, collaboration, cooperative models, network/collaboration building, practice sharing, performances, experiments, documenting, archiving, talks, workshops, etc.
Luke George's role in the Corps is a kind of ecologist and calibrator—supporting and caring for artists and for practice—interfacing with Temperance Hall as their Artistic Associate.
Through securing some Australia Council for the Arts Resilience Funding in June 2020, Temperance Hall was able to offer some support to the cohort during lockdowns, to Zoom together, share ideas and talk about what they'd like this project to offer. Here is an artist statement that this cohort collaboratively developed:
We find ourselves as eight artists amidst the uncertainty of the next 6-12 months, with a generous invitation to participate further in our existing relationships with Temperance Hall. In light of the current pandemic, we have all been forced into new modes and ways of thinking, and so now we especially want to question the default working modality: the individually branded artist producing their own works while competing for an ever-reducing funding pool. Our desire is to re-envision and reposition how sustained artistic practice and creation may take place through a co-supportive framework where we can create alongside, with and for each other.
Our self-provocation amidst structures and frameworks is to redistribute these towards ideas founded in collectivity.
- We will inform each other’s ideas and methodologies, inevitably supporting and affecting each other’s developing practice.
- The project will offer working possibilities for the independent dance sector’s practice more broadly, as it unfolds.
- We will consider alternate modes for how our work interfaces with the sector and the public, through finding moments of shared and communal experiences in addition to the existing conventions of studio visits and public performances.
- Across the course of the project we plan to involve other independent artists, in response to the critical and urgent dialogues we are in with our peers and the sector.
Exquisite Corps 2020 is supported through funding from Creative Victoria and Australia Council’s Resilience Fund and will run until March 2021.
Images: Exquisite Corps