PARALLEL REALITIES

Neil Howe

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Parallel Realities: The Development of Performance Art in Australia, traces the development of performance art from its precursors in theatre, dada, happenings, fluxus and conceptual art to the various forms of Performance Art that exist today. Unlike Europe or America where performance has been traced by numerous writers and critics from its origins in European Futurist evenings and Dada soirees, the Australian development of this art form has followed a different sequence of events. It is a story that more closely follows the development of an Australian social and political identity and the arduous task of developing an Australian art and culture within a predominantly materialist, pastoralist, pioneering society. I have therefore presented this history as a series of chapters covering different periods that lead up to the work of the major practitioners of performance art documented in the last section of the book covering the period when Australian performance art was in its genesis.

This book examines in detail the development of performance art in Australia through its links with theatre, the social and political changes in the society in which the artists live, the effects of influences from overseas, the influences and occasional alliances with popular culture and the pop music scene, and the major developments in the visual arts. By expanding my narration into areas of sociology, politics and general history I have endeavored to paint a broad picture of the social and political events that were occurring concurrent with important changes or developments in the visual arts and thus provide some insight into the sequence of events which has led to the appearance of performance art as a major art form in the seventies and eighties.

Neil Howe was born in 1951 in Melbourne, Australia. He first studied Biology at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. For a number of years he was employed as a research officer at the CSIRO, Division of Protein Chemistry and later the Neurochemistry Department of Monash University working on Influenza and Muscular Dystrophy research projects. In 1977 Neil Howe left the world of science to study visual art and entered Prahran College of Advanced Education (now Victorian College of the Arts) to study sculpture under John Davis and David Wilson, photography under Athol Shmith and film under Paul Cox. He was awarded a Diploma of Art & Design in 1980 and won the Powell Street Gallery sculpture prize as top sculpture student of that year. Since 1981 Neil Howe has exhibited sculpture, performance art and video art in Australia. In the late 90’s he began to focus on video art and digital imaging and now exhibits regularly in art galleries, museums and film festivals throughout Europe, USA and Australia. He has won multiple awards and is represented in numerous private and public collections in Europe, South America, South Africa and Australia.

THE DEVELOPMENT OFPERFORMANCE ARTIN AUSTRALIA