My practice: Running through my diverse art practice is a use of re-situated objects in a style seeking a dream-like quality. This serious-whimsical practice starts with experiments exploring the materiality, semiotics, and cathexsis of memories in the object. A meaningful transformation through imagination presents itself and I follow. From the initial intuitions, concrete images and loose narratives are shaped. I work with rather than against the multiplicity of associations for any objects. The aesthetics and concerns of ritual and the importance of participation of the audience are central to the choices I make in my process. I have been working in this way with installation, video, performance art and puppetry.
In 2005, I started making puppets for other people’s theatre work and in 2008 began practicing puppetry and devising puppet artworks. My puppetry is three dimensional, frequently delivered in the round or incorporating the audience as participants. Puppetry is a visual time-based medium: related to 3D kinetic sculpture and performance art. Usually, I use “ready-made” puppets – that is, literally objects that are then animated using movement, voice, and transferred suggestions of live-ness from my own body.
I focus on the role of associations given to objects by culture or memory, delighting in – rather than resisting – the unpredictable individual abstract meanings of concrete objects. These puppets always begin as objects and are transformed in front of an audience. When in motion, out of their usual place, they offer historical or socio-economic reflections and existential humor. Several pieces examine straddling the line between performance art with objects and puppetry by exploring non-verbal and abstract narrative.
“All Debord! Portage…” is performance art and puppetry because it was conceived as part of a theatre and performance conference with my long time puppetry collaborator. “99 Goldfish Space Ballet” is the opposite: it is puppet-art, but was conceived as a performance art piece using the expectations and conventions of that model/mode.
I am eager to work more in installation. Two projects listed under video were installed and designed to be installed. My performance pieces generally include a site specificity that is a form of installation. I only have one piece strong enough to present in my portfolio, a sculptural gallery installation. This is an immerse experience that has been installed three times…
Video Art and Installation
Here are three samples of my work in video. I minored in Cinema Studies and took part in the Queer Youth Digital Video Project (2005). I am not currently a strong editor of video and mostly conceive the work on paper rather than in the edit. I am interested in writing and directing more work that combines puppetry and video.
The first time I am sure that I made
performance art was in high-school, in 2001. I cut off my long blonde hair in front of my classmates and without warning for credit in a university preparatory art class. Afterwards, my art teacher asked me to look up performance art and Yoko Ono. I did not listen to her. I dropped the visual class without looking up Yoko Ono. This was in Sudbury.
Afterwards I saw many bits of performance art on stages in theatres, at Nuit Blanche, on campuses, and in clubs. Living in the theatre-world, I still did not understand what performance art meant to visual artists, how it was different than weirdo cabaret, action art, or live art… or was it? Meanwhile, I was trying to create something I called “DIY ritual theatre for one or none”.
In 2012, I finally clarified the distinction between performing arts and performance art while working at Buddies In Bad Times Theater. I recognized my work since 2010 as primarily in this tradjectory, and since I have been making performance art and attending workshops to learn the practice. I still have not been able to catch up with the theory and history heads.
This section includes a short critique of a version of one work. As of 2016, I am headed to NSCAD, would like to become better at critique and also learn visual tactics more formally.
Grey Muldoon Art 