Alice Theobald (b. 1985) lives and works in Birmingham, UK. Theobald works across a wide range of media including live performance, video, installation, sound, text and sculpture and composes music and soundtracks for her works. Her work fluctuates between script and improvisation and highlights the unstable relationship between art, communication and representation. She is also co-founder of the music/artist-collective Ravioli Me Away. In 2019, they created the alt- opera The View from Behind the Futuristic Rose Trellis which toured the UK to Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge;; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead;; The Box Plymouth and Block Universe, The Albany, Deptford. Recent solo exhibitions include: IL Y AURA (There will be), South London Gallery, London, 2022 and Gaudel de Stampa, Paris, 2022.

C'est-a-dire, 2022 Image transfer, acrylic paint, blind. Launch Pad LaB, La Charente. Installation view. Image courtesy Alice Theobald

Untitled (test), 2022 Image transfer, wood, pencil, Launch Pad LaB, La Charente. Image courtesy Alice Theobald.

C'est-a-dire, 2022 Image transfer, acrylic paint, blind, Launch Pad LaB, La Charente. Image courtesy Alice Theobald.

C'est-a-dire, 2022 Image transfer, acrylic paint, blind, Launch Pad LaB, La Charente. Detail. Image courtesy Alice Theobald.

Ballad of Simple Women, 2020. 360 degree film. Production still. Image courtesy Alice Theobald.
Performers: Alice Theoblad, Penny Klein and Victor Jakeman
Music score: Alice Theobald
Sound: Oliver Jennings
Film and editing: Dominic Dowbekin

A performance for 360 degree film, using immersive projection technology to offer an experimental way to present performances beyond the live moment.

Originally commissioned for ‘In The Round’ performance programme, curated by Rose Lejeune and presented at Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2020, UAE 19–26 November and Pi Art, London, UK, 9–11 December. In collaboration with BroomX.

What Not To Wear Out my Soul, 2019. Performance, Art Night, Walthamstow. Image courtesy Alice Theobald. Performers Alice Theobald, Penny Klein and Thomas Stone. Dialogue developed in collaboration with Tilly Blackwood (Audition Doctor) Soundtrack and lyrics written by Alice Theobald and developed in collaboration with Thomas Stone and Penny Klein

What Not To Wear Out My Soul was an atmospheric site-specific performance which took place after shopping hours on a stage installed on top of a Costa Coffee in the middle of Walthamstow Shopping Mall. It included pre-recorded and live feed projection, a live musical score with contrabassoon, violin, piano and singing combined with material recorded during a training session between the protagonist (myself) and a Method Acting coach talking through the experience of shopping for a pair of shoes to wear to a job interview they hope to have.

IL Y AURA (There will be), 2022, Super 16mm film transferred into digital, South London Gallery, Installation shots. Image courtesy Alice Theobald

IL Y AURA (There will be), 2022, is a new film installation inspired by Eugène Ionesco’s play La Leçon, 1951. In a Parisian apartment, a young woman arrives in an older man’s home for an ambiguous ritualised language lesson. She is invited to read her ‘exercises’ and begins to nervously recite a series of phrases describing various scenes that ‘will be’ in the future. As the phrases become more surreal, the professor’s behaviour becomes more animated, erratic and sinister.

IL Y AURA (There will be), 2022, Super 16mm film transferred into digital, South London Gallery, Installation shots. Image courtesy Alice Theobald

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