Sarah May

Proximity Festival is the first one-on-one intimate performance platform of its kind in Australia. It’s been built from the ground up by Perth artists with one person in mind – YOU.

We work with artists from all disciplines, emerging to established, who want to push their practice and experiment with performance that explores the audience/ performer relationship. In January 2012 we presented our inaugural Proximity Festival at The Blue Room Theatre. We sold out on opening, we won the Spirit of Fringe award and more importantly we helped 12 local artists make and present new work. 2012 couldn’t have gone better so we made the decision to go annual and make it happen again.

"Proximity is a festival for the curious and brave who want to be more than a witness to a performance." PERTH NOW



WHAT'S HAPPENING THIS YEAR?
In 2013 we’re taking over the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts at night with twelve new one-on-one intimate encounters happening in galleries, studios, the office, kitchen and tower. Leave a trace of yourself in the Gallery of Impermanent Things, hang in a time-capsule of twenty-something domestic bliss and watch VHS, destroy an artwork and make another, enter Asterions house blindfolded, experiment with plants, hunt or be hunted. There are few limitations in Proximity Festival, but one rule remains – one artist and one audience member alone, in a space, together.

Our 2013 artists are: Humphrey Bower, Cat Jones, Elise Reitze, Loren Kronemyer, Rachel Arianne Ogle, Ian Sinclair, Janet Pettigrew, Leon Hendroff/ Emma Craig, Sarah Elson, Moya Thomas, Janet Carter and Daniel Nevin.


WHY ONE-ON-ONE?
"Entering each new performance space in Proximity is like entering a portal into someone elseʼs life." **** ARTSHUB

We want to provide independent artists with a chance to take creative risks, push their practice and make small-scale work that can be packed in a suitcase and presented again, and again. We want to provide you, our audience, with transformative experiences that place you at the core of the work, activating you to rethink what performance can be.

There is something undenyably special about being an audience of one. The risk of being alone in a space with another human being and the unpredictability of what might happen when you are together is equally exciting and challenging.

Proximity Festival is an artist run initiative and relies heavily on the support and generosity of its peers, partnering venue, and funding bodies to succeed. Our biggest obstacle is ensuring the Festival is well resourced, and our artists and audiences are kept safe at all times. We work hard to prepare our artists and the venue for the plethora of situations which might occur to ensure there is always contingency plan in place.