Catherine Sullivan - Triangle of Need

About

20th October 2007 - 27th April 2008

'Triangle of Need' by Catherine Sullivan is a new work commissioned by A Foundation in collaboration with the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis and Catherine Bastide Gallery, Brussels. Sullivan who is based in Chicago initially trained as an actress and although she has worked in a variety of media is best known for her theatre and video work that explores the conventions of performance and role playing.

Using a wide range of references ' including film noir, avant-garde cinema, contemporary art and the history of theatre. Sullivan explores the tensions between peformers, their roles and their audience. Similar to the work of her contemporaries Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, Sullivan's work sees a mining of popular culture for pointedly idiosyncratic sources.

'Triangle of Need' will premiere at Greenland Street and will consist of an eight screen film projection. The piece, which is shot at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami sees Sullivan taking her investigation into the constraints and paradoxes of theatrical representation into new territory. Previous works have seen the employment of a variety of devices to produce and generate the behaviours of the performers; including written texts, stylistic economies and gestural regimes. Re-enactments of historic performances have also featured. For this piece Sullivan plans to employ a different device, which on this occasion sees her working in collaboration with a Nigerian film Director.
Sullivan is particularly interested in working with a Director who works within 'Nollywood' ' the third largest film industry in the world.

The script for the piece will make reference to an imagined narrative based on a series of emails disseminating a popular form of fraud and will also incorporate the mood of the Vizcaya, where there is an effusion of meaning to the point of instability resulting in actions of panic, anxiety and fear.
Sullivan wishes the piece to be seen within the context of the current American situation where primitivism is veiled by notions of progress.

For further information about Catherine's work please visit:
www.afoundation.org.uk
www.catherinebastide.com
www.metropicturesgallery.com