Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Wales Trinity Saint David (joint submission with Cardiff Metropolitan University and University of South Wales)
Tulu Girls:
Multi-disciplinary ‘portfolio’ of work and on-going research exploring relationships and the formation of identity in contemporary culture. Published in a variety of forms: dance performance, exhibition, book. In terms of the project’s research narrative, its principal published form is to be found in 3 catalogues, video and online photographic evidence.
Tulu Girls is an ongoing, multidisciplinary portfolio of work exploring the formation of identity in contemporary culture through dance, painting, drawing and installation. The project involved collaboration with dancers, principally Annabeth Berkeley, but the choreography was provided by Williams. The work focuses on the capacity of art to express or address personal and group identities amidst the forces of marketing, consumerism, and social media. Williams promotes multidisciplinarity and collaboration in her practice as a way of accessing the transformations that occur between media, since these transformations, she argues, have the potential to speak of the forces that define personal and group identities. Key transformations in Tulu Girls occur between painting and installation, drawing and installation, and drawing and performance. For example, Tulu Girls: Phantoms of Us sets up relationships between line drawings and dancers dressed as mannequins, with the line drawings projected behind the dancers. There are clear correspondences between the dance on stage and what is depicted in the drawings, but there are deliberate discrepancies between the dancers’ movements and the quality of line in the drawings, to indicate a state of tension or dysfunction. Because of its ongoing nature, the work has appeared in a variety of forms at a number of venues, including: group show We Have the Mirrors, We Have The Plans, Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales, 2011, and Poke Me, Ffin y Parc Gallery, Conwy, North Wales, and SL Gallery, London, 2012. The principal published form of the project’s research narrative can be found in three catalogues, video documentation and online photographic evidence, some of which is reproduced in the accompanying REF portfolio. The project was funded by an Arts Council of Wales Major Creative Wales Award, and a grant from the National Dance Company Wales.
