Rosemary Joy

Visual artist and Artistic Associate

Rosemary Joy makes miniature sculptural percussion instruments for site specific works, usually for very small audiences.

Rosemary´s current projects include System Building, inspired by and performed in Watertoren West (Noorderzon Festival, Groningen), Radialsystem V (Berlin), Melbourne Recital Centre and Sydney´s CarriageWorks. Rosemary also recently collaborated on a project with Mexican percussionist Evaristo Aguilar inspired by the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.

Rosemary has created sculptural percussion works for many Aphids projects with music composed by David Young including Yakumo Honjin which was performed in Matsue Castle in far-West Japan; Underground which toured the Netherlands, Belgium, Mexico, Japan and Australia in 2007-9; the Aphids, Speak Percussion, Fritz Hauser and Boa Boaumann collaboration Schallmachine 06 underneath Federation Square for the Melbourne International Arts Festival; Schallmaschine 07 for Fritz Hauser’s Different Beat Festival in Basel, Switzerland; Matthew Gardiner’s Oribotics [laboratory] at the Sydney Myer Asia Centre; and Scale with percussionist Fedor Teunisse (Slagwerkgroep den Haag)at Bains::Connective in Brussels. Rosemary often works with furniture maker Adam Stewart to realise the construction of curved instruments.

Commissions include an instrument performed by Fritz Hauser for a Swiss Radio broadcast of the Samuel Beckett play Worstward Ho and Beauty Boxes for Ensemble Offspring.

Rosemary´s work exploring sculpture in performance began with Aphids project Ricefields. Conceived by composer David Young as an investigation into sculptural musical notation, Ricefields was performed in Melbourne, France, Japan, Brisbane and Sydney (1998-1999)by Deborah Kayser, Natasha Anderson, Peter Humble and Yasutaka Hemmi.

From 2001-2003, Rosemary collaborated on a series of five projects with percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson which lead to the development of the first miniature percussion project Decor Nuggets , performed by Vanessa at Club Zho in Perth in 2001, and sculptural percussive ballgown Veronique, performed at the Sydney Opera House for the Sydney Spring Festival and at the Shanghai International Arts Festival. Field Kits, Rosemary´s second miniature percussion work, was performed before an audience of 8 people at a time by Graeme Leak, Vanessa Tomlinson, Peter Humble and David Hewitt at Linden Centre for Contemporary Art in 2003 as part of Aphids´ Instrument Building project.

Rosemary’s work has been performed by percussionists including Fritz Hauser (Switzerland), Bob Becker (Canada), Evaristo Aguilar (Mexico), Slagwerkgroep Den Haag (Netherlands), Diego Espinosa (Mexico) and Australian musicians Graeme Leak, Vanessa Tomlinson, Eugene Ughetti (Speak Percussion), Timothy Constable, John Arcaro and Matthias Schack-Arnott.

Rosemary was a founding board member for Rawcus theatre company. In 2009, Rosemary received a Goethe Institut scholarship. She undertook an artist residency at Stiftung Kunstlerdorf Schöppingen in Germany in 2008.