Julia Bardsley is an artist working with performance, video, photography, sculptural objects and the configuration of the audience.[1] Her work challenges definitions of theatre and has been described as 'a major force in British experimental theatre and live art'.[2]
Bardsley was a founder member of dereck dereck Productions; other stage performances in the 1980s included Marie-Christine in Ardele, Where the Rainbow Ends, Gaudette at the Almeida Theatre (where she won the Time Out award for direction), and Too Clever by Half and A Flea in Her Ear (Antoinette Plucheux) at the Old Vic. She was also the assistant producer for A Night at the Chinese Opera with Kent Opera.[3]
She began her career in theatre directing, writing and adapting works for the stage,[4] and was joint artistic director of the Leicester Haymarket & Young Vic Theatres (1991-4).[5] She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Middlesex University in 2007.[6] Bardsley lectures at Queen Mary, University of London, and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.[7] Her work has become known for its experimental use of character, solo performance, and elaborate video and set work in a performance art/visual art context.[8]
Bardsley's work is significant in its disruption of traditional understandings of theatre;[9] her hybrid practice first developed in collaboration with designer Aldona Cunningham in the 1990s through their innovative work on Hamlet at the Young Vic, which in turn led to a five-year long creation process combining theatre, performance and photography, resulting in the work 12/Stages/3 (a Memory Theatre) as part of the British Festival of Visual Theatre in 1999.[10]
From the late 1990s onwards her film and video works have been selected for film festivals internationally, [11] collected and represented in collections such as Lux Artists Films[12] and the University of the Arts British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection.[13] She has also created video art work for theatre productions including An Ocean of Rain, at the Almeida Theatre, London, 2008,[14] and Suenos composed by Simon Holt,[15] premiered at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in 2007 .[16][17]
Presented in London, Glasgow, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Belgium, and Italy.[18] The three parts of which are:
Produced for Chelsea Theatre, Sacred Festival, Improvements on Nature: a Double Act explored themes of science using imagery of amputations. 'It's the science of Charles Darwin incubated by the traumatised imagination of Mary Shelley.'[24]
A modular ensemble piece, the meta_Family, presented in Teresina & Rio, Brazil & Outside AiR - QMUL, London. In 2012 editions of the project were presented at Trouble#8 Festival, Brussels & City of Women Festival, Ljubljana.[25]
A performance project inspired by the Medea myth; drawing on themes of sexuality, eroticism and electricity.[26]