Deborah POLLARD

ARTS LAB PROVOCATEUR 2016

Deborah Pollard is a performer, artist and director based in Sydney Australia. Her artistic practice encompasses collaborations with a variety of arts and non-arts practitioners. Trained originally in theatre as a performer and director, her practice has shifted over the last 15 years towards a hybrid between performance and visual arts.

She received the Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship in 2000 and was awarded the Rex Cramphorn Scholarship in 2001. She was awarded a New Media Arts Board Fellowship from the Australia Council in 2002/3. These fellowships have enabled Pollard to integrate lengthy periods of research and development with her practice. During the course of her Fellowships, Pollard engaged in a program of hybrid arts research that has become part of her vocabulary as a performance-based artist. Pollard collaborates with artists and non-arts practitioners who place her own practice into a different context. Collaboration has shifted Pollard’s work away from the usual use of language within narrative structures towards work that is read through visual semiotics driven by cross-artform experimentation. As a contemporary performance practitioner she pursues collaborations that disrupt and challenge her notions of performance, theatre and artistic process.

Deborah’s performance and installation works have toured throughout Australia as well as internationally. She also works as a freelance director, dramaturge and performer. She has worked extensively with Urban Theatre Projects, Performance Space and Version 1.0 among others.