EMILY BOYLAN

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Artist Statement

My work is about relationships. In my most recent piece, ‘Bluffers’ I look at the words that tend to accompany a failed sexual relationship. I am interested in the clichés that seem to fall into the worst voids that exist between us, as we interact.

In ‘Bluffers,’ the male and female players read their dialogue from playing cards which the performers shuffle before they begin. There is a crossover with the area of experimental theatre, in that a script exists, although it is malleable in nature.

I always try to allow for the influence of the random, and chance, in my work, as I feel this is a governing force in my world. Meaning is important in my work, but I wish to convey its transience and intangibility, rather than its comforting presence. Art is a struggle for me to come to terms with the paradoxical nature of my experience.

Gender is relevant to our perceptions of each other, and to the power we wield in social situations. However, I hope to dispel some common myths about the male-female divide, by revealing the similarities in the words and power-bids made by both sexes.

I have moved from the area of video to performance, in an effort to better capture the human dramas which fuel my work. Theatre and film inform my work, although at times I am rowing against their traditional sense-making narrative functions. If anything, the presence of a live element in my work, an element of risk and randomness seeks to remove our artificial structures of understanding, to approach a truth which is more of the moment.