July 2021

July 2021 – Artists of the Month

Each month the wendy.network selects three artists within its growing community. The entirety of the month is dedicated to the artists, their work and their passions.

July features: prOphecy sun, Kim Gromoll and David Yu.

spotlighted –> prOphecy sun

An interdisciplinary performance artist, queer, movement, video and sound maker. Their practice celebrates the vulnerable spaces of the in-between in which performance, art and life overlap.

I recently published a piece in ReIssue about a series of interdisciplinary pieces I have been making in response to the landscape surrounding the Kootenay Dams near Nelson BC. The artwork explores my relationships with this place and its complicated history through temporal and sonic navigations with an inflatable.

I recently released my sixth album, SkyCat which was recorded with smartphones in my bedroom and from familial locations in Nelson, Sunshine Bay, Nakusp and Vancouver BC. The pieces weave together a mix of improvised sounds, processed vocal loops, drums, synth, piano, field recordings and archival video ephemera as a way to understand knowns and unknowns, debris, trauma, loss, and kin relations.

Drums: Joy on Drums
Piano: Trinity Sun
Ems synth: Josh Stevenson
Mixing: prOphecy sun
Mastering: Josh Stevenson at Otic Sound
Photography: Darren Fleet

Album

Given the recent pandemic constraints, I have been reminiscing on live performances. In particular, I have been thinking on the collaboratively shaped piece Magical Beast: The Space Within, Out and In-Between (2018), which features movement, sound, performance and a two-channel audio and video installation.

The piece was shown in the festival, Dance in Vancouver’s (DIY@DIV) at Gold Saucer studios in Vancouver BC on November 17, 2018. This artwork explores notions of care and Carriance as evidenced through experimental choreography, costume making, videography, inflatable forms and through live performance, and temporal sequences of sound that weaved throughout the gallery space. The audience was encouraged to touch, push, pull, carry and/or lift the Beast away from their bodies. Eventually, the Beast deflated, and I climbed inside and faded out the vocal loops. 

Collaborator: Luciana D’Anunciação, 

Props: Meghan Rosner 

Photography: Reese Muntean

Curators: Deanna Peters, Carolina Bergonzoni, Jeanette Kotowich and Kevin Fraser.

Link: https://prophecysun.com/Magical-Beast

Interview for spotlighted artist of July

Kim Gromoll

 A visual artist based in The Netherlands working with nature, spirituality & the universe.

Cocoon is a series in which deceased insects are gathered throughout daily life. A fragile husk is all that remains from many of these creatures, yet upon closer inspection immense beauty may be found in their transient physical presence. The glass cocoon as an intervention allows for the short life of these individuals to resonate beyond their own time.

A selection of feathers is intuitively chosen and released to the lower room. Detached from their natural purpose to serve flight, the feathers are now able to show their own unique personality. As they dance down from the ceiling a magnificent and ethereal play reveals itself. The feathers’ descent is guided by what once was its natural function, its remaining form as a separated entity in combination with what seems like the will to express its newfound identity.

During my time in Bali, I encountered many daily offerings locally known as “Canang Sari”. In its current adaptation local plants, candy & other natural objects are brought together with several traditional aspects in order to find a balanced mix between the present western culture and the offerings of eastern origin. By combining our own environment with the experiences and the mindset encountered in Indonesia, Canang Sari intends to instill similar gratitude and respect towards our surrounding world & to inspire a different approach and connection with nature in both a physical and spiritual sense.

David Yu

Operates an interdisciplinary artistic practice that is subcategorized under multimedia, installation, and performance.

David Yu’s work stretches from sculptural forms and installation, to audio, video, and live performers. David’s current research is based on performance within a frame of fluxus, where the audience places themselves into the work as participatory elements. He positions himself within the creator-catalyst role that generates situations for viewers to negotiate. David’s practice attempts to modify and pinpoint areas where sculpture/installation, performance, and audience intersect by exposing the notion of the performative gesture that can be embedded in the aforementioned elements. Through this he attempts to coerce viewers into performance, integrating themselves within the experience of the artwork.

Oracular Spectacular is a performance/installation that combines artistic intention and parapsychology (psychic phenomena) through automatic drawing. Automatic drawing is the process in which a clairvoyant receives extrasensory perceptive visions in order to create drawn images, a subset of automatic writing. The performance involves the artist sitting on a rotating, highly decorated, wood platform with two psychic clairvoyants surrounding the platform. The artist concentrated on specific concepts creating psychic energy during the performance for the clairvoyants to psychically translate into drawings. There were four sessions creating four separate sets of drawings. In total the whole performance lasted for 1 hour. All the drawings were attributed to the artist at the end of the performance. 

With much of David’s work there is an element of social immersion, where he gathers responses from a reaction to planned situations. Ultimately he aims for a blurring between a constructed situation and a “real” situation.

Want to be showcased as wendy’s next ‘Artist of the Month’? 

The wendy.network is dedicated to forming real, productive and sustainable relationships within the art world. We strive to promote your work and passion, so we want to give you the recognition that you deserve!

Fill your artist profile with your work and get ready to be one of wendy.network’s ‘Artists of the Month’!