Care Tactics

With CARE TACTICS, Luke George has imagined, curated and tailored the program to best serve, complement and add value to TH, its community and Melbourne’s independent artist sector at this time. All projects are focused on the act of gathering, particularly in a time when our communities and arts sector need healing to sustain practice. The program aims to invite and include many newcomers to Temperance Hall, including artists, audiences, First Nations people, people of colour, LGBTIQAP+ people, arts elders and university students.

In these totally weird and destabilizing times for art, I want to rethink how we’re doing all of this... how we’re making and doing art - how it nourishes and sustains us - how our art reaches people -  how it is happening before, between and past the moment of “the show”. Through my work with Temperance Hall, I wish to choreograph and curate an interconnected map of encounters and intersections between people of different experiences, backgrounds and places. With a focus on the act of gathering and social connectivity here at the Hall, on Bunurong Boon Wurrung Country. CARE TACTICS is an artist-led, artist-centred program of gatherings, talks, workshops, screenings, developments, performances and celebrations. Providing opportunities for artistic development, artistic challenge and exchange - prioritising the voice of the artist and people who need to be heard and seen. In all of this, I am focused on care as a radical strategy (yes, radical), to build social capital, to survive, sustain and transform.         

CARE TACTICS
2021 – 2023 program 

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Screening and Conversation Series

Focusing on significant dance works from both the recent or distant past by some of our community's most celebrated artists. Caring for the ephemeral artefacts of our dance histories and herstories, to revisit a moment in time and ask what was happening for the artist and the world at that time - perhaps as a way to look at where we are now. Curated and facilitated by Luke, each public screening includes a conversation and Q&A with the featured artists.

Escape Velocity by Hellen Sky (Company in Space)
Thursday 29th September 2022, 7pm – 8:30pm
Temperance Hall
Find out more information here

Rasa Sayang by Tony Yap
Thursday 28 April 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Temperance Hall
Find out more information here

the d a n s e project by Rosalind Crisp
Saturday 11 December, 2pm - 3:30pm
Temperance Hall
Find out more information here

Descansos...resting places by Helen Herbertson
Thursday 9 September, 7:30pm – 8:30pm
Online event
Find out more information here

Grey Area by Phillip Adams
Friday 5 March, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Temperance Hall
Find out more information here

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
Public Talk Series

Critical and urgent dialogues between artists and guest speakers from the broader community. Talking about art, performance, the body, dancing and what it means to gather. Experimenting with form, the series will dance with the way we talk and listen to each other, centering the knowledges and wisdoms of those often unheard.

Queer Gestures - where is the queer body in dance, now?
Thursday 3 February, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Temperance Hall
2022 Midsumma Festival
More information here

ALIENS OF EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY
Performance+Art Party
Saturday 25 March 2023
More details to be announced soon.

EXQUISITE CORPS
Artist Cohort-in-Residence

Supported with space and time as well as individual stipends, each cohort-in-residence is self-organising and determines their own activity, process and outcomes – collectively and individually, to re-envision and reposition how sustained artistic practice for an individual artist may take place through co-supportive frameworks where they can create alongside, with and for each other. Curator, Luke George supports and cares for the Corps as a kind of ecologist and calibrator, encouraging, facilitating and mentoring the artists to consider new modes and ways of thinking for their artistic practice. See more information on Exquisite Corps here.

Exquisite Corps 2020 artists (October 2020 – March 2021):
Amrita Hepi, Andrew Treloar, Benjamin Hurley, Harrison Hall, Luke Fryer, Emma Riches, Rachael Wisby and Luke George

WORKSHOPS

A workshop series led by Luke or guest artists who will each consider the act of care and what it means for them. Caring for the body, caring for practice, for the art form, for self and others, caring for the spaces and places we live and dance in.

Ropetimes with Luke George
Sat 23rd - Sun 24th April, 11:00am - 6:00pm each day
Find out more info here

En Route: The Care Edition by Joel Bray
Saturday 13 March, 10:00am – 6:00pm
Temperance Hall
Find out more information here

Artistic Associate, Curator, Artist: Luke George (lutruwita -Tasmania, 1978) creates new choreographic and visual work that takes daring and at times, unorthodox methods, to explore new intimacies and connections between artist and audience. Luke’s artistic practice is informed by queer politics, whereby people are neither singular nor isolated; bodies of difference can intersect, practice mutual listening, take responsibility for themselves and one another. Based in Narrm (Melbourne), Luke creates, performs and collaborates with artists and the public across Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. In 2019 Luke was recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship and premiered new works in Dance Massive and the Venice Biennale. In 2020 Luke was appointed Artistic Associate of Temperance Hall and to the Co-Design Consultation Group for a dedicated Melbourne dance festival. In 2021, Luke is presenting performance commissions for the National Galleries of both Victoria and Singapore, the Liveworks Festival of Experimental Arts (Sydney), and a permanent design installation commissioned for Melbourne’s newly built Victorian Pride Centre.

Find out more: lukegeorge.net/