CAAP Artist Lab 2.0 + ‘The Red Dust’ performance at William Yang's exhibition launch of ‘Claiming Heritage'

I was incredibly lucky to have recently been invited to attend the second Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) Artist Lab, this time under the brilliant stewardship of Tessa Leong and Sandi Woo. The inaugural Artist Lab at the end of 2020 fostered the collaboration between myself and my director Nate Gilkes on ‘The Red Dust’ and the Institute of Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University, who contributed both subtitles and Chinese musical instrumentation to the show. Returning to the second Artist Lab, which was held at Sydney Theatre Company, was just as an invigorating experience as the first, as I got to know a new batch of Asian Australian performance artists as well as share and learn new skills.

Jules Pek-Lowther and Nate Gilkes performing selections from ‘The Red Dust'. Photo by Xiang Zhang.

We were also extremely lucky to be invited by the IAC to perform selections from ‘The Red Dust’ at the opening of legendary Chinese Australian photographer and performance artist William Yang’s latest exhibition, ‘Claiming Heritage.’ Having recently performed his most recent one-man show ‘Gay Sydney: A Memoir’ at the Seymour Centre to great acclaim, we were very lucky to watch William perform a short excerpt from the show alongside photos which also feature in his exhibition. We were then incredibly honoured to perform songs from ‘The Red Dust’ at the opening, which also features themes of growing up as a Chinese Australian, and also, ironically, climbing mountains! Many thanks to Jing Han and Dr. Nicholas Ng from IAC and Tessa Leong from CAAP for their involvement.

’Claiming Heritage’ runs until May 5th at Parramatta South Campus, Western Sydney University, so be sure to check it out!