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Performance Space recently wrapped up our inaugural Stephen Cummins Bequest Queer Residency Program for 2013. This new initiative creates opportunities for emerging queer performance makers to critically hone their practice in a rigorous and supportive environment. We were truly thrilled by the quality and quantity of applications we received for this year’s round of residencies, making for a tough-but-exciting selection process. In the end we were delighted to offer Sarah Coconis, Dallas Dellaforce and Shian Law the 2013 Stephen Cummins Residencies, and it’s been a pleasure to host them here at Performance Space for the past 3 weeks.

Here is a little on each of their projects:

Sarah Coconis | Mentor: Julie-Anne Long | 20-25 August 2012

Sarah Coconis developed not one but two works during her residency, working closely with mentor Julie-Anne Long. First up, she entirely reworked her performance Monstralis, which satirises the current climate of conservatism, wealth and privilege in mainstream Australia, with hilarious and grisly results. Through her residency Sarah also showed the first stage of a new performance work: a series of vignettes based on her background as an elite athlete and her (surprising and confusing) time training at the Australia Institute of Sport in the early 90s.

Daniel Dellaforce | Mentor: Chris Ryan | 27 August – 1 September 2012

Dallas Dellaforce is the long-ago-created and continually-evolving alter ego of performance artist and stylist Daniel Jay Squires Cater. Exploring the excesses and obsessions of the 1980s and how they relate to today’s extreme consumer- and image-driven world, Dallas employed various performance technologies to stretch and test his own body image, taking us on a wild ride through 80s fashion, bodybuilding culture, and unspeakable levels of glamour.

Shian Law | Mentor: Deborah Pollard | 3-7 September 2012

Shian Law is a Melbourne-based performance artist who aligns himself with experimentalism, new dance practice, new media and interdisciplinary collaboration. He will be developing an improvisation and performance strategy for his The MEME show, which draws from the notions of interconnectivity such as ‘Semantic Targeting’ and ‘Semantic Web’ (this way the unstructured data can be effectively delivered and advertised across application, categorisation and community boundaries).

To assist in the development of their work, each of these artists received:

• a one-week solo residency in Carriageworks’ Bay 19
• a $1,000 artist fee
• technical and curatorial support and feedback
• mentorship with an established artist
• a facilitated showing and feedback session

A call for applications for the 2013 Stephen Cummins Bequest Queer Residency Program will be made early next year. Watch this space!