DEBORAH KELLY | ARTIST

CREATION is religion, manifesting in spectacle and intimacy. An artwork for a time when paid opinion trumps environmental evidence, CREATION proposes a crowd-sourced belief system teeming with pleasures and possibilities. 

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Built in collaboration with metropolitan and regional communities and institutions, the work encompasses performance, visual arts, design, dance, food, music and literature. At each preparatory site, leading artists direct artform-specific workshops with local publics. Each workshop series yields an element of CREATION: a liturgy, poetry, a cosmological imaginary, ritual garments, choreography, song, sustenance and ceremony. 

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CREATION is multi-dimensional and cross-disciplinary, moving across and between contemporary art, politics and ritual. The work entails moving and static imagery, a transcendent soundscape and intimate encounters for learning and exchange. It culminates in collaboratively-devised participatory performance events and a large-scale kinetic installation comprising suspended costumes, banners unfurled, sparkling collage-based animations, choral singing and foundational texts reproduced as walls of words, holy cards and banners.  

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CREATION seeks to engage with the dream life of humanity to build ambiguous and beautiful practices of collectivity. It aspires to counter assaults on the biosphere with lateral, joyous, grieving, enraged action. Our era demands preposterous thinking, bold experimentation, leaps and loops and flights of faith. CREATION is evolving through a cumulative regional residencies and open workshops with partner institutions in NSW, QLD and VIC.