Anne Wilson
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Statement
My art practice has been influenced by theatre, cinema and ballet. As a professional dancer I spent time rehearsing, training and choreographing- time that outweighs the brief moments of glory in performance as a dancer. Transitioning from dancer to artist reveals the same conditions exist in visual art practice. We produce works out of a process driven by experimentation, repetition and endurance. My work often uses my experiences as a dancer, the efforts taken to perform to explore the psychology of performance itself.
I see performance as an expression of the desire to experience something more than everyday life. Some dance techniques makes that possible albeit momentarily. By transcending the limits of the human body the dancer can become ethereal or morph into a bird. I am more interested in the failed state of transcendence found during training and rehearsal than in the gloried state of the performance. My work is more about the drive that motivates a performer in rehearsal and practice than the actual transcendent moment in performance on stage because it belies a yearning, an existential state that has a relationship to death and the body.
Recently it has become obvious that all my works are autobiographical – they mirror experiences of life and ageing – of death.