Joshua Di Mattina-Beven
Joshua is an emerging creative producer/maker/performer working and playing across
Gadigal and Bidjigal Land. Having previously curated ‘Love Letters to the Horizon’ at
Backspace Gallery and ‘Kudos Live’ at Cement Fondu, they specialize in fostering community
across the visual and live arts, with a specific curatorial focus on queer ontology. With them
they bring experience working as an assistant producer with the Sydney Festival and
Performance Space. Josh studies a double degree of Arts/Fine Arts at UNSW, Majoring in
Theatre and Performance Studies, Sculpture and Moving Image. Joshua is also a performer
themselves, recently presenting club choreography at Abercrombie Hotel as part of ANGELS
ONLY, and musical puppetry for ‘Everynight’ at the Seymour Centre.
︎ @---
Up Your Ass, or, From The Cradle To The Boat, or, The Big Suck, or, Up The Slime
Conceived as a hybrid performance/exhibition, ‘Up Your Ass, or, From The Cradle To The Boat, or, The Big Suck, or, Up The Slime’ mobilizes sculptors, sound artists, performers, and cultural theorists around Valerie Solonas’ play text of the same name. The text, set over a single day, follows Bongi Perez – misandrist, sex worker and professional loiterer – as they poke and prod their way through the patriarchal systems which shape their city streets. Described as “juvenile”, “crude” and “barely a play”, the text becomes a binding manifesto for 10 artist’s exploration of queer destruction, liberation, and community.
The physical gallery will hold artists working across queer sculptural assemblage – Bonnie Huang, Em Harbridge, and Laura Luciana. This space reimagines the text’s location, the city sidewalk, as a site of continual deconstruction – one where amateurism becomes sacred, the material/social intertwine, and playful debauchery is taken very, very seriously. The set will be developed in rambling collaboration as the performers rehearse the play text. The works included in this proposal are indicative of past and future practice.
As part of the exhibition’s public programs, performers Sydney Jarret, Ruben Newman, Blake Wilson and Tessa Walker-Charles will interpret and re-perform the original play. They will pool their varying performance practices, of drag, poetry, clowning and theatre, to embody Solana’s 60’s politic. In doing so, the collective will reveal the text's continued radicality and possible prejudices. Performing alongside them will be noise artists Ailsa Liu and S.C.U.M., using their signature earsplitting, industrial audio-witchery to develop an original score for the production.
Attached to this proposal is a development schedule and budget. The project will be led by curator Joshua Di Mattina-Beven and producer Sharlini Williams, with dramaturgical support from Sydney Jarret and Laura Luciana.
All artists included have been confirmed for participation.
︎ @---
Up Your Ass, or, From The Cradle To The Boat, or, The Big Suck, or, Up The Slime
Conceived as a hybrid performance/exhibition, ‘Up Your Ass, or, From The Cradle To The Boat, or, The Big Suck, or, Up The Slime’ mobilizes sculptors, sound artists, performers, and cultural theorists around Valerie Solonas’ play text of the same name. The text, set over a single day, follows Bongi Perez – misandrist, sex worker and professional loiterer – as they poke and prod their way through the patriarchal systems which shape their city streets. Described as “juvenile”, “crude” and “barely a play”, the text becomes a binding manifesto for 10 artist’s exploration of queer destruction, liberation, and community.
The physical gallery will hold artists working across queer sculptural assemblage – Bonnie Huang, Em Harbridge, and Laura Luciana. This space reimagines the text’s location, the city sidewalk, as a site of continual deconstruction – one where amateurism becomes sacred, the material/social intertwine, and playful debauchery is taken very, very seriously. The set will be developed in rambling collaboration as the performers rehearse the play text. The works included in this proposal are indicative of past and future practice.
As part of the exhibition’s public programs, performers Sydney Jarret, Ruben Newman, Blake Wilson and Tessa Walker-Charles will interpret and re-perform the original play. They will pool their varying performance practices, of drag, poetry, clowning and theatre, to embody Solana’s 60’s politic. In doing so, the collective will reveal the text's continued radicality and possible prejudices. Performing alongside them will be noise artists Ailsa Liu and S.C.U.M., using their signature earsplitting, industrial audio-witchery to develop an original score for the production.
Attached to this proposal is a development schedule and budget. The project will be led by curator Joshua Di Mattina-Beven and producer Sharlini Williams, with dramaturgical support from Sydney Jarret and Laura Luciana.
All artists included have been confirmed for participation.
