Deborah Kelly

Climate catastrophe is upon us. And yet, here we are, so far down the wrong road. Trumpeting a gas-led recovery. Watching wildlife disappear, forever. Still stealing stolen lands. Letting liars lie. Is it possible to imagine a way away from this precipice?

I dreamt of an insurgent queer science fiction climate change religion.

For CREATION I offered a premise, payment and provocation to artists I love and admire. I held out scant dry bones and hope, and they handed back blood, stink and breath. Etched skin, heartbeat, foot thump. A flicker. A faith.

This work is becoming. Specifically, it is becoming the work of a plurality of artists whose cumulative power calls into being a resolute and gathering vitality. For CREATION.

SJ Norman lent his soulful, gothic glory to the task of bringing forth the slyly glittering text at the centre of this endeavor. Everything leads to, and proceeds from, Liturgy of the Saprophyte. 

A saprophyte’s nourishment is the decaying matter of previous generations of organisms, and its gift is recycling organic material into simpler compounds that can in turn be taken up by other beings. The richness of this metaphor informs the ongoing evolution of the work of CREATION, on every register. 

Poets, musicians and dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, dancefloor royalty, an oracle, producers, a milliner and costumier, animators and friends have worked steadfastly through the extraordinary challenges of the pandemic. The whole multifaceted project faltered and fell more than once, and thanks to the generous creativity of many collaborators, rose and rose again.

I lost my father under lockdown and all the many labours, all the days, are full of his absence. Without him, I’m walking forward into CREATION, a solemn conceit, a playful diversion. Ridiculous, and yet deadly serious. A way to go on, to be together, to make commitments to and with, to be implicated together, to make a model, to take steps, to hold holy, to be worshipful, to gather and to rise.

Here, an invitation: join us.

www.creationtheproject.com

………………………………………………………………

HOW and WHO

The astonishing Angela Goh transformed 20 strangers into a dynamic choreography collective, devising the steps for our becoming, quite literally, a social movement. Brilliant Lex Lindsay is making us musical, and in the karaoke videos you will meet CREATION’s first beloved singers. Young auteur Alia Ardon made the instructional moving image materials as autonomous works of art. James King picked up the vast challenge of the regalia, conjuring presence and personality for the liturgy’s Holy Orders. Our Oracle Erica McCalman, with gracious co-host Matthew Van Roden, made Darwin meaningful and gave purpose to the Precepts. Collagists resolutely murdered many old books to interpret the Liturgy in workshops at the MCA, in Darwin and in Kandos. Producers Bec Dean, Kate Britton, Tulleah Pearce and Su Goldfish have rendered it real. Making CREATION has also depended on the generative, dexterous encouragement of exhibition curator Rachel Kent, plus Jeff Khan, Micheal Do and the support of Vital Statistix, Arts House, The Australia Council, Create NSW, City of Sydney and the Sydney Opera House.