Rachel Parrys work is primarily concerned with belonging, the fallen woman and various representations and deconstruction of the body and mind. Parry creates surreal, raw, powerful and tactile experiences, as she transforms the space between her body and the audience, finding both dark and sometimes humorous moments. Parryʼs art takes risks, embraces experimentation and aims to create questioning on the social issues she highlights.
For the past six years, Parry has tested the boundaries of how an intimate relationship can quickly be formed with complete strangers. Parry has chosen to take her practice on a journey to learn from her audiences; as an art-knowledgeable gallery participantsʼ expectation and enjoyment will differ greatly from that of an audience built on bodily pleasure, as found on the club scene.
Parrys research delves into the various representations of gender, identity, desire, intimacy and transformation. Finding personal ways to articulate and embody the failing self, the bruised ego, alongside this bloody and the raw language of the body. Her art explores the modern importance of traditional values. How mythology and oral traditions feed the rules of social conduct. How we have unknowingly psychoanalysed all that has gone before us. How oral traditions, ritualistic behaviours and etiquettes have evolved, transcended and now fit neatly into peopleʼs lifestyles.
Parrys work is semi-autobiographical in its nature: utilizing her wild and bizarre experiences, from tragic trauma and illness to simple lifestyle choices. Narratives from the people she has met along her ʻadventuresʼ: Such as sex workers (both empowered and enslaved) and the strength of people in their last days are interwoven with hand me down hereditary tales, to explore Love of Self from forgotten births to the heartbreaking journey to the morgue.

BUSINESS AS USUAL
performed by Adam Rose of Antibody Corporation

"Now, in 2005 -- and my recollection is it was somewhere around the early fall of 2005 -- there were warnings coming from the Center for Disease Control in Washington saying that we were about to see one of the worst flu seasons in recent American history. They warned that you ought to get your flu shot, and then they warned especially to seniors and mothers with small children, infants, that you'd better make sure your kids, your babies and your elderly parents get flu shots, because the flu that's coming could actually take people's lives." --Rod Blagojevich

Ryan's work is multidisciplinary, often uniting performance with sculpture, video, painting, and drawing. He gather's ideas from dreams, memories, and sociocultural beliefs, which often result in the investigation of paradoxes within a self-construction. One of the most consistent characteristics of his practice is the idea of struggle. These struggles in the work are often communicated through the emphasis and articulation on transformations of the self through emotional and psychological reflections. He uses his self as a medium, to reflect onto the viewer a place to see him in a state of transformation that sets a basis for personal and emotional reflection in their self. -- "I believe the purpose of art is to inflict or inspire social change. Therefore within my practice, the changes I intend to assemble are the result of constant questioning, interpreting, arguing, contextualizing, and investigating the performative qualities of time within societies framework of ethical values; the construction of self resulting from everyday existence."

Marthe Ramm Fortun presents a reading circle where everything can be stolen and re-gifted. In lyrical appropriations of poetry and art history, the exercise points to the disparity between the roles of consumer and producer of cultural manifestations. Theft is factored in as a form of audience participation. Painting fills multiple functions as formal parameter, sensuous space and parody. Fortun quotes Mina Loy, Sappho and Chairman Mao but hands the citations to the audience so they can rephrase as they please. Theft and re-gifting is her way of favoring the individual over the symbol.

BIO
In site specific performances, Marthe Ramm Fortun brings canonized texts and art historical references to a space of plurality. Structured improvisation is confined by the surrounding architecture, abstract paintings, the throwing of fruit and commercial billboards. She involves the audience partly in a formal exercise, partly in a critical and hopeful environment. The dynamic shifts between participation and alienation. She pursues unscripted moments where the individual assumes power over her own conditions. This quest takes on poetic, repetitious and rambling forms that seek to abolish distinctions between utilitarianism and formalism. Risk, anxieties, boredom and exhilation are all options. Fortun holds an MFA in Studio Art at New York University. She is based in Oslo, Norway and presents her work internationally. She has performed at venues such as The Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo, Styx Projects in Berlin, SculptureCenter and Poetry Project at St. Marks Church in New York. In September she presents a solo show at Galerie Jan Dhaese in Ghent, Belgium.