The reason I’m in Australia for the first time in a decade, and in Naarm (Melbourne). Once again Rest Area, the first work I did with Onyx Carmine / S.J Norman. (Also Stone Tape Theory, which is next week and for another post.)
The truck of Rest Area will be parked out the back of Arts House at North Melbourne Town Hall for the first week of FOLA Festival of Live Art. Onyx and I will be Door Bitch-ing and in the bed from Wednesday until Sunday, joined by a pack totalling seven, including Virginia Barratt and Carly Sheppard (whom I last saw in Peckham, London at Take This, For It Is My Body).
I want you to come in, to lie down – to hold me, just for a minute.
Rest Area is the invocation and repetition of a familiar desire and a familiar gesture. In the back of a stationary truck, discover an unlikely bedchamber, where you’re invited into a stranger’s embrace.
In a moment of fleeting closeness, audience member and performer enact a fundamental human desire: to hold and be held in the arms of another.
A much-loved signature work originally performed by Norman themself, Rest Area enters its second decade of life re-scored for a cast of diverse bodies. Simple and profound, Rest Area is a one-to-one meditation on longing, comfort, and the melancholy eroticism of loneliness.
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne4–10pm, Wednesday 14 March
4–10pm, Thursday 15 March
4–10pm, Friday 16 March
4–10pm, Saturday 17 March
12–6pm, Sunday 18 March
Duration: One-on-one sessions for 15 mins
Tickets: $20 / $15
