The Uninvited

Image of performance submitted as part of a group project titled: "Palliative care for the planet" to the exhibition Art-Nature-Wellbeing

Westwood, Linnell, Perry and Pretorius are art therapists, art therapy educators and performance artists whose ongoing joint project examines themes of subjectivity, relationship, marginalisation and abjection. Their most recent performance, The Uninvited, brought the ghostly, abject figures of orphaned girls and monstrous ‘hybrid creatures’ into an official UWS celebration of 20 years of art therapy at UWS. The performance was photo-documented by professional photographer, Olga Nebot.
The Uninvited took on an unexpected resonance with climate change and the ecological ‘tipping-point’ when the performance coincided with devastating bushfires in the Blue Mountains. Consequently, in the weeks following the performance, a photograph from The Uninvited, accompanied by a poem exploring these resonances, became increasingly central to Linnell’s contribution to the previously described arts-based enquiry into ‘palliative care for the planet’.