Grief Works
Victoria Spence, Peter Banki, Aunty Rhonda-Dixon-Grovenor, Sarah Barry, Vaike Neeme-Samson
September 16th & September 17th - 7pm
A response to love and loss in a night of ceremonial performance pieces.
A night of performance pieces from artists who have worked with Life Rites, creating funeral rites for their loved ones. The works are an aesthetic response to bereavement, exploring how grief is expressed through the lived sensory experience of all embodied subjects.
Content warning: Themes of death and dying.
Cast & Creatives
Welcome to Country: Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor
Curator & Director: Victoria Spence
Conceptual Dramaturg & Production Support: Peter Banki
Stage Manager & Artist Liaison: Sarah Barry
Hosted by The Cosmic Nuns: Victoria Spence and Sarah Barry
Participating Artists: Emma-Maye Gibson, Scott Wright, Seini Taumoepeau and Tempest Taumoepeau, Chantel Jurcevic, Olivia Martin-McGuire, Splinter Orchestra.
About the Artists
VICTORIA SPENCE has made live art and work at the intersections of cultural, community and creative arts practice as a performer, dramaturg, curator and producer since 1988. Artists and companies include, The Sydney Front, Sidetrack Performance Group, Legs on the Wall, DeQuincey/Lynch, Guillermo Gomez Pena and La Pocha Nostra (Mexico), Blast Theory (UK) and Performance Space.
She is a qualified Civil Celebrant and Bereavement Support Worker. In 2010 she was a recipient of the Australia Council for the Arts ‘Connections Residency’ where she undertook research in the Funeral Industry and established the Living with Our Dead platform to create public site specific ceremonies. This resulted in the inaugural Picnic Among Friends in Nov 2010 that is now an annual event. www.livingwithourdead.com She worked with Kaz Therese to curate The Hunting Party, a participatory event addressing social and cultural issues.
She has curated the Sydney Festival of Death and Dying since 2016, a multi-arts platform for workshops and performances with Dr Peter Banki. Life Rites is Sydney's only end of life and after-death home care, counselling, ceremony and holistic funeral direction practice.
PETER BANKI, Ph.D is a scholar, artist and festival curator. With Victoria Spence he founded the Sydney Festival of Death and Dying (2016–2018), a two day festival, which featured workshops, performances and installations on diverse aspects of Death and Dying at Critical Path and DanceHouse Melbourne. Since 2011, he has also produced festivals exploring creative sexuality throughout Australia, including the Xplore Festival at Fraser Street Studios in 2012 and the Love and Disability Festival at Brand X in 2019. He holds a Ph.D from New York University (September, 2009). His book The Forgiveness To Come: The Holocaust and the Hyper-Ethical was published in 2018 with Fordham University Press. He has also been a lecturer in philosophy at Sydney University and Western Sydney university.
Brand X acknowledge and pay respect to the Gadigal people, owners of the land on which we work. We pay respect to Elders past and present, recognising their strength, wisdom and creativity. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be.
Image: Victoria Spence and Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor. Photograph Liz Ham.