Photography and the Performative

This exhibition examines recent ideas and theories that frame performance as a phenomenon that is everywhere. Performative actions may include the manifestation of ideas, whether literal, oral, spoken, or written. Such forms can be visual, architectural, spatial, gestural and gendered. This exhibition looks at how these different modes may be ‘recorded’ via the medium of photography.

Since the 1960s, photography and performance have experienced a shared history. Artists have embraced the possibilities of this time-based medium by deploying a documentary mode – capturing the fleeting, the happening, the ephemeral. The camera becomes an extension of the artist’s body, documenting their actions and interventions. 

Header image: detail from Hiroshi Sugimoto, State Theatre, Sydney 1997, UA2017.5