The 19th Biennale of Sydney: You Imagine What You Desire will present internationally renowned artist Tacita Dean‘s first live performance work of her career, Event for a Stage (2014).

The world premiere of this one-act theatrical presentation is co-commissioned byCarriageworks and the Biennale of Sydney and made in association with ABC Radio National, who will produce and broadcast a radiophonic version of the performance. The work is presented as part of the 19th Biennale Middle Program, in which Tacita Dean will also participate in an ‘In Conversation’ talk with Artistic Director Juliana Engberg on 4 May.

Performed in an intimate setting, Event for a Stage is centred around the filming of a portrait of an actor on a stage, to be played by British actor Stephen Dillane.

Known for her 16mm film works, drawing, and photography, Dean now turns her talents to exploring the mediums of theatre and radio. Continuing Dean’s exploration of the relationship between the aural and the visual, Event for a Stage is a significant contribution to the unfolding history of art and theatre collaborations. Dean has taken the opportunity of working in a theatre to become even more deeply self-reflexive: by exposing her own way of filming to an audience, she is dramatising the role of medium, while also working with an actor examining the nature of his own presence on a stage.

Emerging in London in the 1990s, Dean has always been fascinated by time, finding herself attracted to objects, architecture and technology on the point of disappearing, including the imminent threat of obsolescence to her own medium: photochemical film. Her work is characterised by a formal elegance and intellectual rigour and has been shown at institutions worldwide, including Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, New York’s New Museum and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Schaulager, Basel and ACCA, Melbourne.

The work is presented at Carriageworks in association with ABC RN; Courtesy the artist; Frith Street Gallery, London; and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris.

• Artists:
  Tacita Dean
•  
• Open:
  Thursday, 01 May 2014
• Close:
  Friday, 04 April 2014
• Address:
  Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Sydney
• Mail:
   info@carriageworks.com.au
• Phone:
  +61 2 8571 9099
• Web:
  Carriageworks
• Admission:
  $35 | $25 Reduced
• Photo credits:
  1. Hero Shot An Event for a Stage | 2. Tacita Dean portrait. Courtesy of Carriageworks