The Epitome of an Oxymoronic Endeavour: Collaborative performative photography between still and movement artists.
An Oxymoronic Endeavour is a collaboration combining two oxymoronic (apparently contradictory) art forms where one artist is also the subject. The choreography and performance occurred only for creating the images and exist only in the resulting ‘performative’ photographic work. The work explores the binary of being creator and performer and the liminal space in between. It breaks with the conventional relationship of photography to dance.
Exploring ‘performative’ photography (performance made for camera), collaboration, agency and expanded authorship her latest work is a collaboration with dancer/choreographer Jessie McCall.
Jessie McCall
Jessie is an independant choreographer and performance maker based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, working at the intersection of dance, live art and scenography.
Jessie's performance works include MDF (Medium Density Fantasy), The Bloom, Industry Party, I Get So Emotional Baby, Daybreak Estate, Infalted Rebel, Hydrate, Hope and Mourning in the Antropocene, Healr, Your Own Personal Exister, Tassel Me This, I never Promised You A Rose Garden, The Way We Fall, Cover Lover and Not At All Topless.
Read more about Jessie's work here
Celia Walmsley
It's a huge honour to collaborate Jessie on The Epitome of Oxymoronoc Endeavour. Jessie's patience, commitment and contribution to this project was immense. Her hours in the studio repeating movements, testing out ideas and ideas is what made this project so rewarding, deep and satisfying in the end result.
As a photographer my artwork primarily centres on collaboration with dancers and choreographers and explores the oxymoronic relationship between stillness and movement, photography and dance.
