Carly Rose Bedford is a multidisciplinary artist (AU/NL) who’s practice consists of performance, sculpture, research and curation. Their work looks towards sites where power is produced and naturalised under the premise of normalcy. They work with a longstanding research on what they call ‘Material Perfomativity’, a methodology that centralises the haptic (bodily) experience while colliding it with material and our habituated relationship to its uses and contexts. This methodology works toward creating nuanced propositions that enable enactment of queer thematics without always reverting to representations of the body and identity politics. Parallel to their sculptural practice Carly Rose investigates methods for institutional critique that considers ways to the engage and transform power structures standardised within institutions through a process of pedagogical exchange, positioning, workshops and exhibition making. They have shown works Nationally and internationally at Institutions such as the Palaise du Tokyo (2017) and the Stedelijk Museum (2019) and TENT Rotterdam. They have received support for their work from Australian Arts council, Ian Potter Foundation, Amsterdam Fonds for the Kunst and the Mondriaan Fonds. They were recently nominated and announced the winner of the MK award.
At Deltaworkers, Carly Rose Bedford would like to examine the swamps surrounding New Orleans and the greater swamps of Atchafalaya basin to seek out readings/mythologies of the swamp concerning power and resistance, both historically and mythically. They will entangle themselves in the engagement, speaking with the inhabitants of New Orleans about their personal experiences, perceptions and swamp time dreams. Mine out traces where the swamp has left its mark, where it embeds itself in the local mythology and how this narrative is shaped by the history of the narrator in relation to the past. Bedford want to observe the swamp through the sensual immediacy of their body. They will research how the Swamp Space can be experienced and what can be embodied from these affective encounters.