Danielle Freakley. Photo by Liz Looker.
Danielle Freakley
Commission | Participatory
Gallery 01
Until 30 January
A convention-bending performance work from one of Australia's most elusive practitioners, in which audiences become the artists.
AGWA stages Equal Opportunity to be a Dictator, a major work by Seychellois-Australian artist Danielle Freakley in which participants offer each other speech using the magic word, “Say”. The work is part of Freakley’s ongoing exploration of “speech theft” and de-authorship, distorting conventional communication and human behaviour to expose the subtext of everyday life.
Freakley’s catalogue of performance, installation, interactive systems work, social practice and sculpture maps the ongoing capacity of art to truly change how we view and act in the world. As it unpicks the structures of our social conventions, she places her often unsuspecting or accidental audiences in unique situations that bring them into the intimate creation of artworks questioning the very grounds of our being and conduct.
“Many of my works ask people to project and introject others directly — a form of ventriloquism, body snatching, de-authoring and re-authoring each other on the fly.” — Danielle Freakley, The View From Here 2021
Freakley is a First Selection Finalist in the Arte Laguna Prize – Venice Arsenale, exhibited at Tate – Liverpool Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art – Sydney, Performa – Performance Biennial of New York, and in various other international biennials, triennials, national galleries, state galleries, and contemporary art spaces.
