Traci Kelly
Stuttgart
I'm an interdisciplinary artist exploring aspects of the body, skin and lived experience through experimental processes.
MessageBorn in a slum close to Nottingham railway station in England, 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; Die Schwarze Lade European Performance Archive, Documenta, Kassel, 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.
Statement
The body keeps twitching
Intelligent, provokative, almost disturbing - you created a space that I will never forget.
Sigurd Sandmo Direktør for Komponisthjemmene, I KODE, Bergen, Norway
My interdisciplinary practice engages audiences in surprising ways to create open and evolving dialogues. Works often unsettle notions of corporeal and socio/political subjectivity, opening up a space for speculation around the status of the lived and material body. Intuitive work emerges in relation to specific contexts and sites, embodying the hauntings of history, the specific vernacular of place and a poetic turn of materials.
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.
The Traci Kelly and Hancock & Kelly Archives
Special Collections, De Montfort University, UK
Archive enquiries to: [email protected]
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