Wall text outside the main gallery of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) identifies Shelley Lasica’s When I’m Not There as a “survey” exhibition, but this is somewhat misleading – at least from an audience perspective. In 1992, cutting edge Australian contemporary choreographer Lasica became Australia’s first dance artist represented by a commercial gallery. She has since choreographed and performed more than 80 works both in galleries and in more conventional theatres.
When I’m Not There was developed as a test case in a research project which asked what it would mean to reference and exhibit more than 40 years of dance practice in a gallery. Dancers perform daily throughout the duration of When I Am Not There in the spacious white void of PICA, moving alongside more than a dozen curious, colourful objects drawn from Lasica’s archive. Netting hung with costumes drops from the roof – though the clothing can only be seen properly if removed and worn by the performers, which happens rarely (three times during my five hours of viewing).
There are panels of abstracted green trees painted on a blue background (by Tony Clark), a confusion of clear plastic tape recalling spaghetti (Anne-Marie May), a rolled out crash matt (uncredited), monochromatic plastic seats (Eero Aarnio), a wall of typed narrative sketches (Robyn MacKenzie), and so on, none of which have a clear relationship to the dance on offer. A close reading of the room sheet reveals each of .