About
Traci Kelly: Born 1961 Nottingham, England; lives and works in Stuttgart, Germany. STATEMENT
The body keeps twitch’’’ing
Intelligent, provokative, almost disturbing - you created a space that I will never forget. Sigurd Sandmo Direktør for Komponisthjemmene I KODE, Bergen
The body keeps twitching, pushing and pulsating at its borders and breathing new types of being. My practice asks urgent questions of the body and its cultural signification. Works have centred on ideas of skin and skinning and thinking-through-touch as a material and poetic gesture towards emergent political subjectivity. Gestures are repeated until the body gradually shifts, trembles, sweats, leaks and opens up a space for the audience to evolve their perspective. The materials I use return to ideas of the body, placing the deep time and energy of gold and pumice alongside hand held time in the ‘here and now’ of twitching muscles. Collected bone, silk and ambergris from the bodies of other species start to weave a relationship with my own body. Works are made for white cubes, black boxes, landscapes and museums. They have taken place in transitional spaces such as corridors and stairways in the overlooked folds of architecture such as thresholds, handrails, elevators and meeting points. They have nestled amongst Roman artefacts and been raised upon altars. They have been urgent and visceral, spectacular and barely there.
BIOGRAPHY
I want to tell you what you should know
Born in a slum close to Nottingham railway station, I grew up surrounded by the scent of spices, steel bands playing on the street corner and reggae blasting out of windows. At primary school, I was awarded a prize for imaginative story writing, a waist apron with pocket chosen by Mr Smith’s wife. I also won an art competition for painting a Great Crested Grebe on the River Trent. Later in life inclinations for imaginative language and creative out workings began to resurface urgently and I progressed as a mature student through art education, finally gaining a doctorate in collaboration and intersubjectivity. The collaborative project hancock & kelly between myself and Richard Hancock has spanned two decades. Critically acclaimed work features in edited titles by Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge and journals including Contemporary Theatre Review and Dance Theatre Journal. Material is held in several publicly accessible archives: Dance4, Nottingham, UK; Live Art Development Agency (Studies Room), London, UK; John M Flaxman Library and Special Collections, School of the Arts Institute Chicago, USA; Die Schwarze Lade European Performance Archive, Köln, DE. Due to the innovations within my work, in 2020 I was awarded the honorary position of International Associate Research Fellow at The Institute of Drama, Dance & Performance Studies of De Montfort University. In 2023 the university acquired the Traci Kelly Archive and the hancock & kelly Archive, where it forms part of the teaching and research ecology.
Published writings
Artists whose practice and support I am grateful for
Richard Hancock https://richardhancock.info/#about
Rita Marhaug https://www.ritamarhaug.com/
Laurel Jay Carpenter. https://www.laureljay.com/
Joanne Lee http://www.joannelee.info/_/home.html
Boseda Olawoye https://www.bosedaolawoye.com/
Julia Wenz https://juliawenz.de/
Eva Schmeckenbecher. https://www.eva-schmeckenbecher.de/
