connect: kaleidoscope IX · photograph · 2016

The sentiment driving this work is connection. Connection between people and connection with the natural world.

connect: kaleidoscope I · photograph · 2016

connect: kaleidoscope III · photograph · 2016

Over 30 people unite in movements to create a large human kaleidoscope, performed under a huge copper beech tree on a meadow of grass and flowers on the grounds of a water-castle. It is a meditative work with an almost spiritual feel. As raindrops fall on the faces of the performers, they share in the experience of connection.

connect: kaleidoscope IX · photograph · 2016

connect: kaleidoscope VIII · photograph · 2016

Sylvia creates a body of work that re-presents these feelings. Her 2-channel film transports us back into the performance. One channel is screened on a wall, the other on a ceiling, drawing the viewer into the meadow, the rain, the slow turning of the kaleidoscope above.

dada: when up is down I · photograph · 2015

On a Saturday afternoon in Sydney a group of healthy people, including two children fell. They collapsed to the floor. Simultaneously. The fall happened during the opening of an art exhibition in Sydney Australia.

The cause?

A dada inspired work of socially engaged performance art directed by Sylvia, performed by everyday people at Brenda May Gallery.

dada: when up is down II · photograph · 2015

dada: when up is down III · photograph · 2015

dada: when up is down IV · photograph · 2015

dada: when up is down V · photograph · 2015

This short film tells the story of this group of people who only met 30 minutes before the exhibition.

What happened?

World Domination (Pilot) I · photograph · 2014

Research tells us that we laugh for less than 6 minutes a day. This is surprisingly only a third of the time people laughed in the 1950s and we are correspondingly almost 20% less happy today than people were then.

World Domination (Pilot) II · photograph · 2014

World Domination (Pilot) III · photograph · 2014

World Domination is a fun and playful work of art that encourages laughter, whilst parodying evil, greed and the desire to control the world. It is a nonsense. It is a silly and carefree project that is happy and evil, playful and scary all at the same time.

It shows everyday people in ordinary spaces acting with playfulness, silliness and spontaneity, while the darker side to the work, the connotations of evil, greed, violence and dominance, act as a counterpoint. Perhaps it is the co-existence of these incongruous attributes that makes the work so engaging.

World Domination (Pilot) IV · photograph · 2014

In the Pilot of World Domination, first performed during peak-hour on a tram in Melbourne, Sylvia directed Movements of Laughter that saw a carriage full of passengers join in with the silliness of the laughter.

This Pilot will be refined and further World Domination works will be performed.

Still from Water ways · 2015

Water ways is a film about human engagement and the waterways that connect a group of people. The film’s protagonists take us on a journey that transports us into the lives of a riverside community in Indonesia. We are given intimate observations and access to everyday people, their homes and things that are usually invisible to us, including their intrinsic connection to an environment that is both essential and harmful.

Water ways II · photograph · 2015

Water ways III · photograph · 2015

We see a slice of everyday life, that starts with a group of children playing in the wash of a boat on a river. As the waterway divides, we follow the path to a tangle of boats that ultimately leads us to the main protagonist of the film, an older woman who shares her point of view with us. This woman absorbs the details of life around her from the edge of a timber mill, as she completes her morning rituals. She takes us into her world, a textured and fascinating place that we are invited to experience and marvel at.

A Naval Novella I · photograph · 2013

How do you begin to understand what life’s like for someone working in the armed services? How do you ask personal questions of someone trained to kill? Someone who, on meeting you for the first time, instinctively thinks about how they would disable you.

These are the questions Sylvia asked herself when she was commissioned to create a work for the Royal Australian Navy’s 100-year anniversary of sailing into Sydney Harbour. As part of this commission, she was embedded with the Navy at the naval base, HMAS Penguin.

A Naval Novella II · photograph · 2013

A Naval Novella I · photograph · 2013

A Naval Novella is a film featuring interviews, physical workouts and anecdotes. The work demystifies the Navy by breaking down some of the barriers that exist between elite Naval personnel and civilians. It shows the human side of the Navy and invitingly allows people to access this closed culture. The work is anchored by the naval tradition of tattoos and gruelling physical training that uses rope.

For the Navy, the rope is a symbol of union, mateship and stability. For the viewer, tattoos are symbols of humanity and individuality.

Study for Dazzle · photo collage · 2013

Over one hundred years ago, naval ships were painted in bold coloured abstract shapes and patterns. Areas of dark and light tones were placed next to each other to break up the outline and shape of the ship when viewed from a distance. This disruptive pattern camouflage technique became known as Dazzle.

During an artist residency at HMAS Penguin in Sydney, Sylvia Schwenk and Sydney-based photo-media artist Anne Zahalka work to contemporise this naval history. They want to build a side view of a naval ship almost 120m long on the Middle Head Oval, using the bodies of thousands of people. Civilians and naval military personnel wearing combinations of black and white lying side by side in geometric shapes would create a Dazzle camouflage. Seen in full only from a Navy helicopter, the work would reveal its full scale and drama.

The work was to be realised during the celebrations of the Royal Australian Navy’s 100-year anniversary of sailing into Sydney Harbour. While the Navy supported the concept, it was unable to resource a project of this scale.

A Naval Novella, also made during this residency, accesses the closed culture of the Navy through a side door, anchored by the naval tradition of tattoos and rope.