To Be Many Things at Once

In their presentations and discussion, artists Archie Barry and Amrita Hepi speak with Melissa Ratliff (Curator – Research at MUMA) about recent works and ideas of embodiment, mythologies of the self, influences, identity and the social function of performance. Archie works across multiple modes of performance, video, music production and writing, cultivating personas that emphasise states of becoming and explore the affective potential of the spoken and sung voice. Amrita’s work also takes various forms (film, performance, sculpture, text, lecture, participatory installation, chatbots), but always begins with the body as a point of archive, memory, dance and resistance.

Archie Barry (born 1990 and raised along the ocean harbour and coastal regions of the Eora Nation/Sydney) is an artist whose practice spans performance, video, music production and writing. Cultivating a genealogy of personas that transfigure and question societal mythologies of personhood, embodiment, power and mortality, they create unsettling connections with audiences through disquieting bodily gestures, de-formed and re-formed language. Barry has presented solo exhibitions at the Heide Museum of Modern Art (2020–21) and Blindside Gallery (2019). Their work has been presented in a range of group settings including Monash University Museum of Art (2021), National Gallery of Victoria (2019, 2021), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2017, 2020), Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2019) and Contemporary Art Tasmania (2019), among other spaces. They have given performance lectures and artist talks at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (2018), National Gallery of Victoria (2019), Parsons and The New School (2018, 2020), Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2020) and Monash University Museum of Art (2019).

Amrita Hepi (born 1989, Townsville, of Bundjulung/Ngapuhi territories) is an artist working with dance and choreography through video, performance, installation and objects. Using hybridity and the extension of choreographic or performative practices, Hepi creates work that considers the body’s relationship to personal histories and the archive. Hepi is currently a Gertrude Contemporary artist in residence (2020–22). She recently worked with Kaldor Projects/Serpentine Galleries, London, as a participating do it artist; realised commissions for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, and Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney, involving text bots interacting with AI (all 2020); and presented new work at The National: New Australian Art, AGNSW (2019). In 2019, she was a recipient of the Vienna-based danceWEB Scholarship and in 2018 and 2020, she received the people’s choice award for the Keir Choreographic Award. In 2022, Hepi will present Monumental at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and RINSE for Performance Space at Carriageworks, Sydney.