Julia Bardsley

“Bardsley is a really fascinating artist…She could have been running the National Theatre by now, but instead quite deliberately chose a different career path. In recent years she has been making inspired and unsettling work on the cusp between the theatre and the gallery.”
Lyn Gardner The Guardian May 2008

Julia works in various combinations as Director, Performer, Filmmaker and Visual Artist. In 2005 she set in motion a trilogy of solo pieces that forge an intimate dialogue between the audience & the performer, the artist & the creative process, live presence & the visual art object. The Divine Trilogy (Trans-Acts, Almost The Same & Aftermaths) has been created with scores by composer Andrew Poppy.

The Divine Triology

Trans-Acts
An accident at the cross-roads between video & live presence. A smash up at the intersection of performance & the script. A Director & Actress splayed across the dissecting table, waiting for the Understudy to walk on & corpse. A last supper for an audience of twelve intimates.
Co-commissioned by NESTA & NRLA

Almost The Same (feral rehearsals for violent acts of culture)
A figure lurks in a dark place of collapse, a theatre of dirt, an ark of humiliation. Beneath the pelt it growls, licks, pants, bites back…
Co-commissioned by Chelsea Theatre & NRLA

Aftermaths: a tear in the meat of vision
Currently in development
From the dazzling heights of the apocalyptic catwalk, from amongst the glorious atrocity merchandise, from the sumptuousness of the furniture of dis-ease, from within the abandoned, mourning mass, the spectacular fe/male host/ess emerges, delivering The Doctrine of Last Things – ‘let the happy endings commence!’
Co-commissioned by SPILL & NRLA