Evelyn Hartogh
Evelyn Hartogh
Evelyn Hartogh
1999
1999 Nov 11 Wickham Drag King BROTHER SISTER p.25.
1999 Sept 17 Glam Slam Pulse COURIER MAIL p.4.
1999 Sept 16 Evelyn BROTHER SISTER p.8.
1999 Sept 16 Glam Slam BROTHER SISTER p.38.
1999 Sept Arts Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1999 Sept 8 MATT CONNORS 'Downright Dazzling' TIME OFF p.26.
PREPARE YOURSELF as the team behind this year’s Pride Festival cabaret event Art Love Jam, is back with a new vehicle called Glam Slam presented as part of the APT3 Artist’s Club at the Zoo. Glam Slam is billed as a ”whirlwind of drag, acrobats, jugglers, music, comedy, beats, performances and installation art”.
Presented as part of the APT Artist's Club at The Zoo, Glam Slam looks set to eclipse the fun, frivolity and glitter of Art Love Jam.
“I was working as one of the event co-ordinators for the Pride Festival,” James recalls. “One of the events I helped co-ordinate was Art Love Jam, which Evelyn had produced for the '98 festival. It went really well [this year]. I think it was one of the highlights.
“I finished with the festival in July but then with the Asia Pacific Triennial coming up, we were basically approached by Michael from Fireworks Gallery and The Zoo to pur on a similar event for the APT Artist's Club. They basically wanted an event along the lines of Art Love Jam, with that kind of feel.”
“It was flattering,” Evelyn continues, “because The Zoo apparently said to Michael, 'evelyn and James will be able to get together a really professional show for you, they know how to work it all'. That was really good to hear back from a venue. They were really happy with how that night had progressed and had confidence we could do it again and improve on that.”
The pair said Glam Slam will offer punters a slicker night of artistic endeavours.
“We found the performers and Michael suggested quite a few to us,” Evelyn explains. “this is far more purely professional people performing – quite seasoned performers. Art Love Jam had a combination of well known people and people performing for the first time. This will be very slick because all these people have been in shows. People like Pope Alice – he'll be making an appearance – and drag queens like Troy Anthony Baylis and Candy Wonder Woman.
“The we've got the juggler and plate spinner, Dave the Libran, who had been in Art Love Jam. There's some more acrobats, Spellbound, performance poet Dallas Angguish, The Swingset again, and so much more. Again it's that sense of an event that's got music, a very visual component to it, installations as well, and the kissing booth again.
“I've always been into this thing of what is connotated as art. It doesn't necessarily have to sit within four white walls and be a select invitation where you supposedly need a degree to understand it. This tries to destroy the artificial boundaries by being both something that anyone can enjoy but at the same time it's presented by people with sophistication and really strong backgrounds in what's happening right now in the performing arts and how all those boundaries are being completely blurred.”
MATT CONNORS 1999
1999 Sept 2 Are You Gorgeous Enough? BROTHER SISTER p.24.
1999 July ANONYMOUS Art Love Jam: A Review SEMPER p36.
“Evenings featuring performance art and the like can be very similar to the little girl with the curlk: ie when they good, they're very very good, but when they're bad they're fucking horrid. And this unfortunately, was the latter. Allegedly based on “love being the common denominaotr”, the event was a self styled collection of “bards, fools, nightinggales” etc, according to the program, but after wasting half a Friday evening at the Zoo, trying vainly to find some merit in the event, I decided that self gratification was the uniting factor and retitled the event as Art Love Wank. Now I've got nothing against the avante-garde [sic], nothing against groups of people united by their sexualities expressing themselves in unique ways, nothing against challenging notions of fixed genders through artistic mediums. What I do dislike though is self-serving, egotistical “artistes” who are too busy shoving their noses up their own asses to notice the reeking stink of talentless crap. The poetry was dreadful, the singing even worse, and whoever it was that massacred Patti Smith's classic “Because the Night” should know that I have talked to my friends in the mafia and they know what's up! Jesus Christ with an H and a half. Admittedly the acrobats were interesting, as were the rollerskaters with fireworks, but maybe that was because they didn’t open their mouths. I don't know. In a month of excellent Pride events, clebrating the diversity of sexualities in Queensland, this was unfortunately a disgrace. To paraphrase a cliché: I know what I like about art, and I didn't like this!”
ANONYMOUS 1999
1999 July Nathan Brooks 'All F***cked Up and Full of S**t SEMPER p.3
“Dear Semper, Re: Evelyn Hartogh's “Barbie and Wonderwoman” article. Evelyn, you’re all fucked up and full of shit. Maybe I’m just coming down with a bug, but I felt physically sick reading your pseudo-intellectual, half-assed, femanazi [sic] bullshit. Femanism [sic] should be about equal opportunity for women … that’s it. Stop your insecent [sic] whining about humanity realising the differences between males and females. While the rest of society get on with life, you’re left screaming at yourself about extremist doctrines of a radical, and permanently obsolete ideology. God help you, coz you’ll explode with anger and hatred before any intelligent lifeform takes you seriously. So, GET OVER IT!!!!! Then we can all be happy:)”
NATHAN BROOKS 1999
1999 22 July 'Art Love Jam' BROTHER SISTER p.16-19.
"Love and acceptance will always win out over bigotry and prejudice”
1999 July 7 MATT CONNORS Love is ... TIME OFF p.25.
As the Pride Festival continues to seduce Brisbane during its ten year anniversary, one of last year’s bright lights is back for another delicious serving. Art Love Jam was a much talked about component of the Pride last year, and this year promises even more fruity fun.
As Art Love Jam producer Evelyn Hartogh explains, last year's cabaret format of singers, spoken word artists, poets and musicians has been expanded to include jugglers, acrobats and even a roller disco. It's a complete multi-media love event.
“I started it up and coined the title last year and did it at The Hub,” Evelyn recalls. “Last year I took on an organisational goal and it did better than I'd originally anticipated. I only made up like 80 programs thinking that was being ultra positive and we had about 120/140 people come through the door.
“I was really thrilled when Pride approached me at the beginning of the year and offered me The Zoo as a space. That meant a much larger venue and a longer time-frame for the event, which meant I could get a lot more performers in. Because the space is logistically bigger, I could bring in things like physical performers – the circus acts, the jugglers, the 70s roller disco – as well as spoken word performers and the singers. Originally the first one was cabaret with DJs in the background. This is really like a showcase.
“It joins together the very cutting edge, avant-garde arts community that's just been thriving in Brisbane in the last decade and incredibly talented queer performers. These people have very similar goals and if they can join together.”
“It's a jam, as well,” Art Love Jam MC Dougall interjects. “It's very spontaneous. Not many of these people have met each other and when everyone came together it was really exciting that all these people had come as well who were really creative and interested in what you were doing.”
As Evelyn stresses, Art Love Jam is about love being the common denominator.
“We want it to be about positivity. Often I'd write satire about homophobia but for this event I thought 'Well what's the one thing that absolutely no-one would be against?'. That is, of course, love. Everyone wants to be loved, needs to be loved, hopefully everyone will get into some kind of loving relationship at some time. I thought that was the best way to approach people to show them that bigotry and prejudice are stupid. Relationships are about love and people shouldn't be victimised for who they fall in love with.”
MATT CONNORS 1999
1999 July Arts Show Interview Radio Station JJJ FM
1999 July Arts Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1999 June 24 MICK WATSON Film Festival Short on Value BROTHER SISTER p.3.
“No positive role model seen instead … heterosexual stereotypes/sex romps, poor visual clarity, distorting sound and even a main character eating a vomit sandwich. Certainly an interesting combination but not what I expected”
1999 MICK WATSON
1999 June 'Pride Festival Turns Ten: Art Love Jam Queensland Pride frontpage story
1998
1998 June Arts Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1998 June Art Love Jam QUEENSLAND PRIDE
1998 March MARGARET SMITHHURST Intellectual Drag SEMPER.
Last week I spent an afternoon with Evelyn Hartogh, an academic performance artist who falls squarely in drag queen territory because she plays with gender roles. One of the rare academics who can actually put that on a CV and explain it away in public.
Thing is, she actually is a she, and not one you'd invite to drinks without first putting on yoru glitteriest thinking cap and undies - there is a healthy mix of brains and left-field dress sense in this girl, who has been in the Brisbane fringe media spotlight since her first performances in 1992.
With degrees in Women's Studies, Education, English Lit (at UQ) and an in-process Creative Writing Masters, Evelyn hasn't spent all that time designing herself only to drag on over a gratuitous Abba remix or persistent referral to the guy in the front row's hairstyle. Her scripts where the impromptu is secondary but used as vinegar on the tongue lashes, are written with the sort of intent that requires footnotes. But it's good to see someone applying the theories. This is the sort of academic work you won't find advertised in The Weekend Australian.
One of the perks of the job is the glamour requirement and Evelyn goes to a lot of troubel to sew all her frocks herself, possibly because most tailors baulk at the sight of bubble wrap. And because this is a serious version of the artform that is Drag, she even has a patron who financially supports her art. Very Renaissance Italy.
Her latest book, quietly titled 'BUY' and selling at Red Books in the Valley, features extracts and scripts from her performances, exaggerated character performances that take stereotypes from the iconography of popular culture – like Barbie, Wonder Woman and Baby Doll. There's a stereotype for every night of the week.
But when I talked to her, I wanted to find out more than just the next gig date.
I wanted to get serious and attempt 'controversial'.
EVELYN: All of my scripts are basically heavily researched – mythology, iconography, focusing on issues like how women are commodified as fetishised objects, femininity as a reflection of masculine desire, looking at the notion that a woman's body is something that must be worked on, must be created [that is] it doesn't re-exist – which is somewhat like De Beauvoir's notion that one becomes a woman. I also look at the notion of the male gaze – for that I have a script where I use the audience for objectifying women.
When I do cabaret shows, I'll start off in a suit and do a script like The Compulsory Heterosexuality Supermarket and I'll have layers and layers of costumes and change wigs. Or I'll do a script that's mainly about rape called Listen don't Look and work it so I'll wear my Wonder Woman costume for that, and its always worked, the audience always falls for it – they all start wolf whistling and 'Hey Babying' when I strip down to the [Wonder Woman] costume.
I always perform by myself. I started at Isn't Studios and the most recent one was at the Capitol.
In the last couple of years I've started getting more gigs that are literary orientated. I cross a lot of genres, but firstly I'm a performance artist. I sometimes get called a poet and I hate that as my literary stuff is visually based as well. I cross into art, literature and cabaret and the burlesque comedienne.
M: Well that is what art has become, content only to draw from many different areas. You perform as a female drag queen don't you?
E: Exactly. That is what I have on my programme mainfesto – that femininity is a big drag.
M: There are strong connotations of John Berger's idea of women objectifying themselves,not able to directly express their pure passions, because of an acutely percieved existence of two women within the one. The one that sees and the one that is seen, meaning a psychological obstacle between the action and the acting. Men on the other hand, communicate directly through the action – being angry rather than expressing anger as such. Women have the burden of awareness of the expression of the point, thus distracting the action from its 'purity' and introducing the potential for drama. In your repertoire you seem to use extreme examples of the female object.
E: But they also play men as well and at the same time. Like in the Barbie Behaving Badly script it finishes with me tearing off my skirt with the line, “I've found the inner slut” and I have a man's PVC g-string which is lumpy. I often finish the show with that and people think I must really be a guy. Of course to make it even more blurred, I have fake breasts on, I do other things in the suit and there's a picture of me in a stetson. In 1994 that picture was on the cover of the Queer Anthology and all these people were ringing up the editor asking for the number of the cute boy on the cover.
M: I suppose your approach would incorporate the way academia looks at sexuality?
E: There are three parts to that – there's biological sex, gender identity and gender performance. There's a really sick medical condition called 'gender dis-function' where someone's biological condition doesn't fit their gender performance, it's somehow seen as unnatural. All that sort of rubbish. Where even though they are quite separate ideas in themselves there's the notion that 'naturally' they're supposed to coalesce into one. All women are supposed to be feminine and all men masculine. It's very problematic.
M: What about acceptance wise? I'm 22 and not unused to the Valley scene so this sort of thing doesn't shock me, I presume to presume you have a message?
E: Well that's it. When I do queer performances it isn't as bad because that kind of community needs the solidarity and strength that comes from the message.
But for instance, for the last show I did at the Capital I didn't do a mail-out or big publicity so there was this straight-ish West End crowd, alternative but not really out there.
And I did The Compulsory Heterosexuality Supermarket which is about the commodification of heterosexuality, but specifically directed at the his and hers products on the market and that notion that often the very same product will be promoted in a very different way for each gender.
M: So you are concerned with the psychological aspect, a more psycho-philosophical approach?
E: and politics. In answering to the preaching to the converted thing, when I was at the Capital gig, this guy who'd seen me perform in the queer context came up and told me that I really shouldn't perform this sort of thing for a straight crowd as it goes down much better with a queer crowd. What rubbish! I've been heckled and I have really shocked and spun out audiences. I mean there'll be sometimes when they'll love it but some people will be so taken aback its not funny. People who expected just to be purely entertained rather than to be rattled and questioned. Performance Art started off in the Futurist movement around the turn of the century with a guy called Marinetti – an amazing dude who wrote this essay called 'The Pleasure of Being Booed', and he said that, and I'm going to paraphrase this, he said that applause indicates a well-digested meal. However, if you are booed and have shaken up people, if you're going to be avant-garde – and the literal translation from the French is to advance the boundaries, then you're pushing at taboos and what people hold very dear, so they're going to be shocked and they're going to be taken aback. But that could also be an initial reaction because I've often had people come up to me a week later and say that when I did it they didn't know what was going on but kept thinking about it and wondering and so on. And they've comeback to me with all these amazing interpretations- which is just great because that's what I like, not only having people who think they know exactly what I meant – a ridiculous idea – but instead getting 20 different interpretations.
M: That's exactly what what Yasumasa Marimura siad in an interview in Art Asia Pacific. He's the Japanese artist who places photographs of himself in the place of well known and seen icons of whatever era. You probably saw the Asia Pacific Trieniale 'Parable of the Blind' interpretation of his, from his High Art stage, where he put himself into Brueghal's painting via clever computer imaging and altered the context to fit a Japanese consumer family of the 1980s, each falling blindly into a ditch. He's done that with Marilyn Monroe, you might remember that picture used for the Sydney Biennale I think, he does it with Jodie Foster. We used one of his for the last edition of Semper, unattributed. We're a bit slack about that sort of thing. Anyway he said that about his work, that he'd much rather hear an out-there interpretation, one that suprises him, rather than forward his own and end the discussion.
E: It's about being a trigger mechanism for people to question things they've previously just walked around and made assumptions about, making a solid truth – and I want to shake that notion of the solid truth, to say that no, that is not the way it is, there are actually a million possibilities.
M: Well this is the the psychology of it. You are dealing with the response and a response's variety is proportionate to the viewers, however many and whoever. In a sense you're the control, the concept that is there to flipped over and around by anyone else but you.
E: At the heart, it's cultural critique and to do that … oh how to put this? Well. Political dissidents were valid in the 1960s, it [protest marches] worked then it was radical, it was new, and a lot of people got involved. Now it has lost all its meaning – it doesn't work. Take the last rally I went to, the One Nation one – I was just sickened by it, they had an enclosed area for the protesters. It was mainly fo the secret service to upkeep records on political activists – 'a friendly fascism' sanctioned protest, completely meaningless and useless. Whereas the drag queen Pull Your Pants Down who did a send up of Pauline [Hanson leader of One Nation], that was much more effective [as a protest].
M: It's that Satire things again. It really is the most effective and meaningful put down of a silly idea. That's where it's at – an intelligent dismissal of something by putting it in an extreme form and makes people sit up and realise just how ridiculous the idea was – and thus embarassed to be taken in by it.
E: I'll do a set and start it off with humour, so as the audience laughs they start to relax and then the politics, which are quite radical, shock them at the same time as amuse them. It is a much more receptive atmosphere to work in. Cultural production seems a lot more effective than any rally because people remember it – because of the enjoyment.
M: Mmmm. Never having been to one, due to common sense or laziness I'm sure, rallies do seem a bit extreme these days.
E: No, it's more that rallies are a form of conservative extremism, there's already an assume d idea of what a left-wing rally is and that's not going to change. I'm not decrying rallies. They are really good for the people in the left-wing so that they can remember that there are people who support what they believe in, so that they can have a sense of community, of strength and solidarity but as far as actually effecting change, I don't think they are particularly good. I mean, right on – knock yourself out and have a rally, have a good time. But just don't think that it is going to be effective change because it just isn't.
But take Paris – when they were going to bring in up-front fees, all the students and all the academics marched so that was effective and they didn't get the up-front fees, in Australia there was just s small group of the usual. It's a social activity far more than a political action.
(I flick through her new book for question stimulus and stop on Barbie. Barbie's a good one to take off. Everyone's doing it.)
E: I did my thesis on Barbie last year – the Fetish Commodity and the Merchandising of Femininity in childhood: a Performer's Perspective'. I researched childhood – the myth. I looked at play and femininity in performance and then other cultural practices that show the commodification of women, like child models. I didn't look into pornography in depth because that seemed too obvious. 'Pornographcy' the word, changes with cultural contexts. The word 'pornia' is Greek and there are five words for the different types of love and 'pornia' just means sexual love, so pornography just means depictions of sexual love. But in this cultural context 'pornagraphy' tends to mean depictions of naked women more than anything else. And it tends to be seen as derogatory to women, whereas 'erotica' is more lovely and nice. A lot of the time because of my work where I have images of me wearing reasonably scanty outfits, people think of me as quite dirty.
M: So tell me, what is the Performance Art story?
E: Well the Western beginning was around the turn of the century with the Futurist movement and then around 1930's you've got a big surge [ in Dada], and then in England with Gilbert and George and in America with Carol Schneeman in the Fluxus movement. They are some of the strongest points of it. But essentially performance art was a reaction against the commodification of art objects, objects that had become exclusive and expensive pieces. It was about art that only existed in the moment, the arts being the art object – like a subject-object displacement. But the thing is that in indigenous cultures, performance art is an ancient thing. In the West, it was a 20th Century art phenomenon that refuses to be categorised.
M: Oddly enough it has been categorised in the end – as performance art.
E: But then there are those who categorise performance art itself. My work has visual and installation bases, personas and shifting, audience participation and so on. But my work is mainly speaking which is why they call me a poet and I hate that because its prose. So those people are then like, of well, the only real performance art she did was early on when the only stuff I did were actions with only a few words.
So there are fools out there who totally miss the point of a cross genre multimedia art form and if you slip too far out of their idea, then you're not performance art, and I'm afraid that's crap.
M: It all comes down to relative 'pluralism' doesn't it? That's a good excuse for a term. I guess punching through the boundaries of performance art means incorporating yet another medium. If you were going to ask yourself how to make your acts even more avant -garde and revolutionary, that would be the place to start.
E: Well this is it, that's the problem today. Any artist who wants to push the boundaries as such has to have an awareness of what they're pushing. But to care too much about the audience. Any artist who is worth their salt will realise that any art they do is is basically themselves. And if they always remember that and do it for that reason, then they will come up with a much more interesting product, one that is more avant-garde.
Who cares about the audience? The actual art product itself is the most important thing.
By putting yourself in the public realm you become a commoddity. We're in a capitalist system. Last year I had these boys, 'fans', who said that they'd been in love with me since 1994 when I pushed a vacuum cleaner down Queen St Mall dressed as Wonder Woman. Most people realise that I'm an academic and intelligent but then you get the dufus boys who I'm actually really amused by, who reckon that “she's a real goer cause she wears those scanty outfits and gets her tits out.” So I let boys like these try to crack onto me and it'd like – you fool! I'm sorry, if I date anyone then they have to be pretty damm intellectual I'm afraid. I'd be like (breaks into snap monologue with a deep and suitably scary voice) – what do you mean you haven't read Luce Irigaray? I'm sorry I'm not sleeping with you if you don't understand Cixous' theory of a woman's sexual organs being her entire body. Well! Obviously you're not going to be a good shag buddy, so see you later. What do you mean you know penis-in-vagina is sex? Look excuse me but that's only been thought of as sex since the 18th Century I'm afraid young man. That's the pure capitalist notion of production where the only product is sex and everything else is foreplay. Well I'm sorry but you're wrong. Everything's sex mate, everything.
MARGARET SMITHHURST 1998
1998 Summer MIRIAM LO Young Writers: Living the Cliché WESTERLY #43:4 p.7-13.
1998 July 23 Poetry Festival Launched at Library SOUTHERN NEWS p.30.
1998 July ELLEN Buy Book Review SEMPER p.47
“Evelyn Hartogh is a Brisbane performer and writer. Following three successful editions of SOLDOUT comes BUY her second collection of photographs, performances, and essays (1992-97). Each book is handmade, bound, signed, numbered and very colourful Evelyn's performances and essays focus on examining and poking fun at the hetero-patriarchyand its notion(s) of femininity. Many identities and different voices carry Evelyn's “anger, sarcasm and cathartic satire” to her audiences. She draws from mythology and iconography to focus on how women are commodified and fetishised and comments on the silencing of queers. In “Buy” she showcases some of her creations: Baby Doll, Tampon womanand Cyberwhich, as well as giving space to some of my favourite divine/powerful women: Lillith, Athene, Aphrodite and Wonder Woman. “Buy” is very well paced switching between academic essays, short observations, photography and comical satires. These are spread throughout three sections, “Barbie Fetish Commodity”, “Identity and Artiface” and “Silences”. Being an editor, I couldn't help but pick up on a few syntactical errors, but these do contribute to the homemade, zine-y feel of the book. Evelyn says she wants to “confuse, shake-up and disturb” her audiences” and “infect them with uncertainty till they react with more questions”. If you enjoy being challenged and wanna bomb the partiarchy (or if you dig the patrirachy and need a big fucken wake-up call), “Buy” is for you.”
1998 ELLEN
1998 Feb Arts Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1998 Feb 28 Evelyn Launches Book SOUTHERN NEWS, p.19.
“Wonder Woman with a taste for household appliances, Barbie the Performance Artist, Baby doll – trying to catch Evelyn’s face before it changes is difficult. Fortunately the 26-year-old Hill End performer has self published her second book of performances, scripts, articles and personas”
1998 Jan 22 Drag Jazz Satire BROTHER SISTER p.15.
"Eric Hartogh, who has been performing under the name Evelyn Hartogh since 1992, is presenting a new show and launching BUY a collection of performance scripts and photos … as well as including the comedy satire, that Hartogh has built her reputation on, this show will include more dance and song”
1997
1997 Nov 3 META FINNAMORE Eve Hel Performance Artist UTOPIA p.13.
Eve Hel is a well known figure in the Brisbane arts scene. With her new shows “Baby Doll” and “Barbie Behaving Badly” she slices through the dominant paradigm with a rapier-like wit and an array of intriguing personae, Eve Hel gleefully satirises contemporary constructs of femininity. I spoke to Ms. Hel about her work, and the concept of synchronicity of work and life.
M: Does 'performance artist' suit you as a descriptor?
E: Well I do stuff in different spaces: at writer's festivals and at Art Galleries – I kind of don't fit into either. I'm an orator, but also a visual performer: it's 'creative spectacle'.
Some see me as a sculptor as well. There is s link between sculpture and performance art – in terms of costumes – they're 'living sculptures'. The stuff I do is script-based, but the characters are also based in costume – heavy disguises. They're like interchangable scupltures. My work draws on the post-punk art provera, (poverty art) ideas: found object sort of stuff.
M: What are some of the underlying concepts of your performances?
E: Art as art product, the artist as commodity – performance art as anti-commodification but also the artist as the embodiement of commodity. You're producing an art product and you are the product – even though I create a distance between the self and the object, kind of creating a subject/object disruption. In a capitalist society all humans are consumers and commodities. The 'selling self'. The 'great male artist tradition'.
As a female artist there are assumptions about my morality because I deal with sexual politics. Because of my gender this can be seen as a sort of narcissism – because the female is a commodity and is only viewed through masculine desire. Men painting female nudes is seen as OK, but a woman who uses the sexualised body is seen as narcissistic. I can only be read as a feminine body; the desired object. I play with this whole thing: the 'defiant object' (Carolee Schneemann called herself the 'cunt mascot' of the Fluxus [1960s-70s New York based art movement].
M: What is is that drives your work?
E: Seeing femininity as a commodity and satirising it.
M: What sort of responses do you get from audiences?
E: In general I get really good responses. People come up to me and say things like ' yeah I really identified with that'. People come up with a myriad of interpretations.
Because my stuff is so costume-orientated, and I do both male and female personae, sometimes I get mistaken for a Drag Queen. I have also been abused by men calling me a whore/slut etc. I remember one comment I got was that I 'have a lot of unresolved anger towards men'. I said, “well I'm one in fout” [referring to the statistics of women abused as children]. Of course I'm angry with men! They run the world and there are only small concessions made to women.
M: How is your work funded? Do you go for grants?
I'm really slack with that! I like to kind of self-fund. I access a lot of free or really cheap resources at the moment, but I guess I'm starting to look into “playing the game”. I basically get money from gigs and selling the book. It's difficult – Arts Qld likes to look at me as a 'poet' , but I don't really fit [entirely] into that. There's more funding coming up for inter-disciplinary work.
It's more like art/life praxis – I couldn't not do it. I'll do other things to get money. I'll teach , model, whatever. But this is my 'life work'.
M: What's in your tool box?
E: I keep all my handbills, originals of articles [I have] published, my press kit and clippings, slides stills, and I'm building up video footage. I'm getting a website together. I tend to use women artists as photographers etc.
M: Can you describe the feminism of your work?
I'm anti-essentialist with femininity. It's a construction, a disguise. It's performed and interpreted. A constant imitation. The costume in a way is looking at how gender is performed. I suppose my work deals also with transgressive femininity – being a viewed speaking object (the subject/object disruption again). It's about using female iconography, looking at how women's bodies are used against them, how they are used to trivialise women. That whole 'siren' thing: women blamed for men's lack of self control.
M: Did you actively make a choice to 'be a performance artist'?
E: I kind of fell into it. I did some shows with Christine Ploetz for Isn't Studios, and then she asked me to do a solo. I really enjoyed it I kept writing and performing at different venues. But I've recently reassesed my childhood and I basically grew up in a theatre. My brother was lighting technician and my mother was secretary of the Mount Isa Civic Centre, and I was a dancer as a child. All the ingredients are there.
M: Does the starving artist syndrome affect you?
E: I'm so poor it's not funny. There are so many sacrifices. I have no support from my family – they think I'm a prostitute! I wish I could do sex work – its [probably] better money than performance art!
I mean it comes in cycles. I have poverty stretches then quite a bit of cash will come in. You have to put in the long haul. There's no immediate cash gratification.
I've been performing since 1992, but it wasn't until 1995/1996 did I start getting a couple of hundred dollars for a show, not just $50 or $70. They [paid gigs] are few and far between. In some ways that is why I did the book. I walk around with it, work crowds! In my performance art I'm producing a product, which I keep developing. There's not that clarity of being paid over and over for what you do with book sales and repeated performing.
There are fellowships and residencies. There's money in it in the long run. I'm working on establishing a personality cult that would Marx and Mao pale by comparison.
Eve Hel is currently finishing off her Masters; Barbie: Fetish Commodity the Merchandising of Feminity and Childhood, a performer's perspective at Griffith and continues flogging her book “Sold Out” at every available opportunity.
1997 META FINNAMORE
1997 June ALEX HUNEEUS Digital Arts Come Out Down Under wired.com
1997 March EDWINA BARTLEME Bad Girls Come Out To Play QUEENSLAND PRIDE
”Women behaving badly is a fun, creative project which investigates how women subvert and transgress dominant ideologies and lifestyles … a celebratory and critical look at women’s lives …”
1997 March Arts Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1997 March Women’s Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1996
1996 Oct 20 Festival Frolics THE SUNDAY MAIL p.65.
“Evelyn Hartogh is not likely to shock easily after pushing a vacuum cleaner down the Queen Street Mall dressed as Wonder Woman. So she will not be daunted by wrapping a few tuna cans around herself in her latest incarnation as Millennium Mermaid. Hartogh, 24, will appear as the fishy Goddess as part of La Boite’s Shock of the New Festival, until Saturday.”
1996 Oct 17 OLIVIA STEWART Expect the Unexpected What's On COURIER MAIL p.5.
"An eclectically clad modern mermaid … innovation, invention and imagination are the priority … MILLENIUM MERMAID [PHOTO: Evelyn Hartogh]: an interact piece combining stamps, sculpture and slide projection, which questions cultural depictions of female sexuality, autonomy and power”
1996 Sept 22 NICOLA ROBINSON Plastic Women and Concrete Responses SUNDAY MAIL p.92.
Sold Out is selling out.
It is the third edition of the book by cutting-edge Brisbane performance artist Evelyn Hartogh.
Everyone has heard of Wonder Woman and Barbie. Evelyn Hartogh dresses up as these characters in real life and uses satire as a way of making feminism, that dirty word, consumable.
Sold Out is a collection of scripts and photographs of [her] performances since 1992.
“People don't realise all the photos are of me and are saying” 'Oh you're Barbie, I mixed you up with the person who did Wonder Woman [I actually do both and more besides]',” Hartogh said.
“They are selling out. I have to borrow money from a friend to print more.”
Performance art tends to be layered with thick, cultural messages but, politics aside, it is all about entertainment.
“To make feminism entertaining and acessible, which is exactly it, “ Hartogh explained. “Something that people can enjoy rather than be afraid of. That is why I use a lot of humour.
“Feminism is a dirty word. That is because of fear of change and generational shifts because women do a have a lot more access to society than their mothers did. The relevance of feminism is lost on a lot of people.”
“A lot of the time I use satire and caricatures of models of femininity.”
Hecklers? Yes of course she gets them.
“Well of course when you get that kind of reaction, a harsh reaction, what I've done is roll with hecklers and embarrass them in front of the audience but times when there's been an extreme amount of reaction, I end up being quite fascinated by that and it pushes my point home.”
“It depends if I do a few different pieces in a certain order; pieces that may shock or embarrass may make them laugh if I get them into my mindset.”
“That is something I have learnt, how to place certain pieces so that they will listen and respond rather than react.
“I want people to think and question what they have accepted as truths.”
The performance artist has certainly made her mark in Brisbane with her satirical style, Barbie and Wonder Woman, or any of her other characters are well worth a look.
“Well I've taken characters that already exists, like Wonder Woman, and Barbie and Lillith, who is the first wife of Adam, she is in the Jewish texts, and then I've invented characters like Tampon Woman, Cyber Which?, and the Drag King. There are more: The Preacher, The Corsetiere and the Prose-titute [sic].”
Hartogh has a strong list of performing spaces. “Galleries, nightclubs, dance parties, cabarets, conferences and public spaces like the Queen Street Mall and Valley Mall, and theatres like La Boite.”
But time is running out for those who have so far missed Hartogh in performance mode. She's soon to pack up her bags and head to Melbourne in search of a wider challenge [unfortunately this did not occur when I was fired from my high school English teaching job for being gay and sued for thousands of dollars and this very interview was used as 'evidence' against me]
That's not to say the Brisbane scene has not been a challenge, but the audience pool is vast and she needs to expand.
“Well aside from the performance side, I was feeling I was getting a bit lazy ecause most of the time people would contact me for a show and occasionally I would put in a submission,” she said.
“I want a bit more of a challenge and introduce myself to new people and hunt down new places to perform and take a wider audience and avoid the Brisbane Summer!”
“I am going to finish my master's degree down there [but I stayed in Brisbane and finished it here], Women's Studies, what else?”
Sold Out is available from Scrabble, Man Bites Pumpkin, the Book Nook, Red Books, The Women's Bookstore and Emma's Books.
With Hartogh heading off in December [the only move I did was between Brisbane suburbs from New Farm back to my old stomping ground of West End], there's no need to put off the trek to the live show.
NICOLA ROBINSON 1996
1996 Jan EDWINA BARTLEME Activist Art vs Tradition Wanda: Women in Art BACK UP
1995
1995 Sept 20 Evelyn Hartogh’s book Soldout GREEN LEFT
“Performance Artist and Feminist Evelyn Hartogh will be launching a book entitled SOLD OUT which documents her work over the last four years. The book features original scripts of her performances including ‘Barbie’, ‘Wonder Woman’ and ‘Tampon Woman’. Hartogh’s work seeks to challenge patriarchal representations of women’s roles and women’s bodies. She will be launching the book with a series of performances around Brisbane. She will appear at Metro Arts on Wednesday September 20 and at the Zoo as part of the Writer’s Fringe Festival on Thursday September 28”
1995 June FRONT COVER Evelyn Hartogh FRUIT: A QUEER ANTHOLOGY
1995 May 31 ABBIE MORRISSEY Review of Big Time Small Fi TIME OFF
“This well orchestrated event was put together by Chapter Muzik, with an impressive line-up of interstate and local acts and the large crowd that crammed into the disused warehouse was overwhelmed by a feast of the senses. To warm up the evening and provide accompaniment to the food, art and visuals was a solid line up of solo and performance artists. On the musical side of things we were entertained by Paul from the Sump/Under my skin, Pat from Small World Experience and Deb from Wonderous Fair. Performance-wise Evelyn, Jacinta and Nicole rendered some thought provoking pieces ...”
ABBIE MORRISSEY
1995 Feb ANONYMOUS Review of Typecast SEMPER
“Evelyn Hartough [sic] stole the show with the women of the Toilet Doilies walking on stilts as she spoke. The fires at the bottom of one of the women’s stilts set off the fire alarm, and the crowd of two hundred hot sweating art enthusiasts had to evacuate the premises.”
ANONYMOUS
1995 Jan Arts Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1995 Jan 13 Typecast BROTHER SISTER
1995 Jan 11 MOCK-E Typecast TIME-OFF
”Evelyn Hartogh is a performance art regular who … has been working with Bartleme Galleries for the last two years and has used characters such as Wonder Woman and Barbie … ”
1994
1994 Sept 14 NICOLA ROBINSON Review of Lollie & Evelyn Hartogh SCENE p.11.
1994 July DALLAS ANGGUISH Queer Collaborations iv.
1994 June 15 DES PARTRIDGE Women's Role a Real Wonder COURIER MAIL p.4.
Evelyn Hartogh doesn’t believe art should be confined to gallery walls.
The 22-year-old New Farm performance artist dresses up as Wonder Woman and uses a vacuum cleaner as a prop to make a statement about women in the 90s.
The City Heart Association is allowing the artist to bring her distinctive art to the Queen Street Mall on Sunday at 1pm for an a performance she says will last “about as long as a feature film – about 90 minutes”.
The Queensland University graduate in arts (with a double major in English literature [and philosophy]) says women still have a long way to go to achieve the status of men in society.
“Somehow it falls back on the women to be responsible for the nurturing and the domestic roles,” says the artist.
“Wonder Woman represents the huge responsibilities women have to accept in their lives.”
Evelyn couldn't give a full performance in the Queen St Mall yesterday as she rehearsed for Sunday's event, which will also feature half-a-dozen of her friends.
“I had to travel into town by bus and it wasn't possible to bring the Hoover,” she said.
DES PARTRIDGE 1994
1994 June 15 GAVIN WALLER Spotlight on Evelyn Hartogh SCENE p.39.
WHO: EVELYN HARTOGH Performance Artist, Aquarius, Feminist
WHAT: Investigating icons of femininity and sexuality and how they influence women’s position.
HOW: Giving voices to the silenced, bringing laughter to the ludicrous assumptions and lies about women, sexuality, life and death.
WHEN: Bartleme Galleries “Sham” Friday June 17 as Barbie (Mattel)
Also – Queen Street Mall “Thank you” Sunday June 19 as Wonder Woman (DC) with Vacuum Cleaner (Hoover)
Plus - Queer Conference: Tuesday July 5th University of Queensland, Thurs July 7th Griffith, and Friday July 8th QUT
WHERE: Art Galleries, cabarets, Conferences, Streets, Nightclubs
WHY: I enjoy an artform where speech, text, form aesthetic and movement can co-exist and where questions become beautiful.
BRISBANE: “.”
CLUBS: Better half full so there is room ion the dance floor!
PERFORMANCE ART: Can be anything, constantly changing, transforming, can never be fully defined
MAGAZINE: Women comprise less than 5% of people working in the western comic industry, Brisbane's minority include: Trudy Cooper, Tanya Walden and Dominique O'Leary
FILM: Barbarella, The Hunger, The Virgin Machine, Belly of an Architect
SONG: Clag's 'Chips and Gravy', 'Security Man' and 'Goldfish' are always stuck in my head!
VIDEO GAMES: When women are usually in need of rescue and [are] victims. Except Barbie who can only have an adventure if she's asleep! The Cyber Femmes are coming, look out!
TV LAST WATCHED: American – 'Some Kind of Wonderful' and American Music Awards (So much BIG hair and insincerity – and thanking of God!)
FAVOURITE THINGS: Mermaids, Riot Grrls, Wonder woman, flora and fauna, Luce Irigaray, Helen Cixous, Anais Nin, Hair Dye, and Freddo Frogs
TYPICAL SAYING: Chips and Gravy
THRILLS: Swimming in June when the air is freezing but the ocean is warm
CHILLS: Period Cramps, and Sexist, Racist, Homophobic comments
BEST TIME: Should be right now
WORST TIME: When I feel like giving up
SAY ANYTHING: Free Art Live!
GAVIN WALLER 1994
1994 May 15 ANNA ZSOLDOS New Brisbane Street Directory TIME-OFF.
1994 April 3 NICOLA ROBINSON Acting Up in the Streets SUNDAY MAIL p.140.
If you see superhero Wonder Woman and companions trekking though the City and Fortitude Valley Malls some time during the next couple of weeks, don’t be alarmed - it’s performance art.
Performance art which first surfaced in the Sixties [actually the term was only coined in the 1960s and many performative art from much earlier is now categorised as Performance Art] as a reaction to the commercialisation of art in galleries, is being brought to the streets of Brisbane by performance artist Evelyn Hartogh.
Hartogh, who usually performs pieces in full before performing exceprts in nightclubs, believes her style of performance should be more accessible to the general public.
Performance art is something which “goes against definition”, Hartogh explained, because it can combine any existing art form.
For the trek from the Queen Street Mall to the mall in Fortitude Valley, Hartogh will be dressed as Wonder Woman and will be doing some cleaning with her vacuum cleaner.
The street performance piece cannot be classified as busking because Hartogh will not be stopping to entertain people or collecting money but will just be “moving through the mall” making full use of the security cameras to document the show on film.
“I want to say to people that performance artists should make use of the security cameras as a take off,” Hartogh said.
Performance art has fast been gaining recognition and popularity on Brisbane's nightclub and cabaret circuit during the past year. Hartogh has had much to do with performance art’s rising status in Brisbane and is a sought after performer.
“Well I suppose as far as content goes I use a certain degree of monologue,” Hartogh said. “Whenever I first do a performance piece I do it in a gallery context.”
“I've been called a performance poet but I hate being called that. I am not a poet.”
Hartogh uses costume changes, visuals such as video projection and slides, interactive installations (pieces of art which are altered after her performance) and lights when performing in galleries.
Performance art is social comment and it's often shocking for the viewer who is unaccustomed to it.
NICOLA ROBINSON 1994
1994 Feb MELINDA MCDOUGAL Women’s Show Interview Community Radio 4ZZZ FM 102.1
1992
1992 March Model for Hairy Dog Fashion Parade 7.30 Report ABC TV