No Matter is an improvised game of incessant talking in which Rohanne Udall and Paul Hughes attempt to exhaustively account for their five-year artistic collaboration. This durational performance invites new audiences and old friends to stop by, listen in or leave.
The performers interrupt one other whenever they stutter, bullshit, or find themselves mute. Their rambling and improvised speeches give rise to errant phrases which are plucked and mounted on the wall: the performers select from this constellation of conversation-starters to deliver impromptu lectures which in turn seed further topics and terms. A self-portrait is indirectly produced; a growing library which reflects the concerns, beliefs and philosophies of this duo as they compete to keep speaking while not really saying much at all.
The interdisciplinary practice of Timber and Battery is restless, playful and opportunistic - sensitive to the materials and contexts that it finds itself in. Over the past five years of collaborating, Rohanne and Paul have produced an sprawling body of irreverent work, including video, sound, sculpture and performance. Driven by questions of ‘what is enough?’, ‘what if it was just that?’, their work experiments with a broad range of ideas and gestures to approach the minor, the oblique and the otherwise overlooked.
No Matter is just the latest in a series of innumerable conversations taking place between these collaborators across the years: through discussions, text messages, over drinks, working with others, in libraries, on stages, and in publication. Their restless practice continually fidgets with itself in reflection and reconsideration; a borderline-narcissistic self-interrogation that undercuts from itself through its playful regard of the material world.
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Sunday 27 May 2018
3-4pm
No Matter:
Timber & Battery (Rohanne Udall and Paul Hughes)
“The task at hand is to speak without hesitation, deviation or repetition… “
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