Short Form Inversions

Short form Inversions for the 2022 Boyd Residency:

Complete Skin

The artist/subject (Geoffrey Watson) collaborates with a tattoo artist to faithfully reproduce all permanent marks on the subject’s body (scars, freckles, moles etc.) at the exact same point on the opposite side of his body, creating a perfect symmetry.

This project takes the bodily evidence of age, mishap and entropy as a blueprint for artificial/artistic intervention. Artificialisation is played out on the same body as the source material, with one side acting as the ‘authentic’ and the other as its replica.

KEY COLLABORATORS: Paul Stillen (tattoo artist)

Reverse Charlie Rose (the Violet Spurlock hour)

A scheme to invert the Charlie Rose-style interview format. In each episode of this weekly TV special, interviewee Violet Spurlock is interrogated by a new interviewer.

The Violet Spurlock hour inverts the standard interview in its relentless attempt to paint a completed picture of a single person. Both interviewer and interviewee are charged with the mandate to keep it fresh- continually discovering new details about the subject.

The series will conclude at the point at which it becomes clear to all parties that we have discovered every possible aspect of the subject.

KEY COLLABORATORS: Violet Spurlock, Takeshi Kondo (videographer/director)

Reverse Paradise

Extension of Reverse Fruit- in which objects common to still life paintings were stripped of their outer layers and reconstructed inside out using embroidery techniques.

These reversals honour the inherent uniqueness of each object by examining it, attending to it, and defiling it in the most tender terms.

I want to see how far this process of inversion can be pushed, experimenting with concepts such as the Reverse Home, Reverse Landscape, Reverse Church, Reverse Theatre etc. applying the same process to objects like trees, furniture, topographical and built structures, religious icons and other existing artworks.

KEY COLLABORATORS: Andrew Treloar, Gary Pegg (South Pacific Taxidermy)

Reverse Choreography

Existing works have practices such as Audio Description, Tactile Tours, Auslan, soft performances etc applied to them, and then are stripped of any content to which the concerned practice does not affect. Works are then retroactively reconstructed, using the accessibility practice as the primary source of referral.

Collaborators are tasked with reversing the chronological progression: Idea-physical process- finished work- ‘accessibilised’ work, creating a new piece which branches off from the point of accessibility to create a companion piece.

KEY COLLABORATORS: Nilgun Guven- AD expert. This short-form work will involve multiple casually engaged members of pertinent deaf and disabled communities.

Geoffrey Watson SC

The person with the highest Google rating for my name is a Sydney-based Senior Councillor. Rather than attempting to overtake him in terms of online notoriety, I want to collaborate with the “Sydney Silk” in order to merge our identities and create a digital SuperWatson.

Mr. Watson SC has given his consent to this proposal. I have made some moves towards realising the project (a work I performed in at Underbelly Festival, Sydney, attracted a large contingent of legal professionals, expecting to see a dancing barrister), but the two of us have not yet met or directly collaborated.

KEY COLLABORATORS: Geoffrey Watson SC

Reverse Jayne

Reverse Jayne follows a ‘documentation first, process second’ ethos.

1. The creative team (dancers, choreographer, photographer) gathers at the site of a future performance, invents and photo-documents scenes from that performance. They then disband until the memory of that documentation has faded.

2. The team regroups and improvises a performance in which these scenes are recreated. This performance is video-documented and the team disbands once again until this stage is forgotten.

3. The team embarks on a rehearsal process, beginning by dissecting and specifying the physicality, and progress to a discussion about the ideas behind the work, which becomes more abstract and speculative the further it is discussed.

Reverse Jayne flips two creative demands/desires:

To have a rigorous creative dialogue which doesn’t require imagery to support it
To have a stimulating physical manifestation which doesn’t require an explanation

KEY COLLABORATORS: Rachael Wisby, Amber McCartney, Nilgun Guven, Andrew Treloar (performers), Ashley Mclellan (documenter)