Julie Duffy (she/her)
Duffy’s work brings together different mediums; working across sculpture, printmaking, text, video and performance. These methods allow her to explore her own embodied understanding of the body in motion, drawing on her experience in martial arts.
Taking on extensive research, Duffy references multiple periods and events that have taken place in history. With this current body of work looking at the dancing plague of Strasbourg in 1518, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy-tale The Red Shoes, old Hollywood movies, the dancing partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, acid house and rave culture of the late 80’s and early 90’s and our current pandemic. All in an attempt to better understand the need to dance, be it controlled or otherwise.
Bio
Duffy completed her undergraduate in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee in 2011. Moving to Glasgow in 2019 to begin her studies on the MFA.
Notable group and solo exhibitions include Coral Canyon, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2013; This is how the world is supposed to work, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop as part of Embassy Annuale, 2013; Rhythmic Structure, Pig Rock Bothy, National Galleries of Scotland, 2015 and Organised Improvisation, Kiosque (á côté de la Chalet) Parc de la Garenne, Nérac, France, 2019.
She has taken part in residencies at Edinburgh College, 2014-2015; Cove Park Winter Residency, Argyll & Bute, 2017 and 2018; and Studio Faire, Nérac, France, 2019.
Dr Beat
A Platform for Dance
Tapping into the restrictions on our bodies from the past year Duffy is interested in how we share experiences of the body through collective dance moments.
A Platform for Dance has been inspired by the set designs for Busby Berkeley’s dance routines, staging at the Glasgow Palais dancehall that once thrived in Dennistoun and staging erected in Strasbourg during the 1518 dancing plague as a way to cure the inflicted. Each of these constructions took centre stage at a moment where the ecstasy of dance was unbridled, with varying outcomes.
This rotating sculpture will provide a home for all things dance and movement, with performance to be developed later in the year as Covid restrictions ease.
Dancing as Pandemic
For Dancing as Pandemic, Duffy inserts herself into the experiences of others. By inhabiting the bodies of three dancers over history, she expresses the pain, anguish and delirium to be in the moment of constant, all-consuming dance. The work looks to discuss our desire to dance and how during times of crisis this need may be heightened.