Joshua Pether

Joshua Pether is of Kalkadoon heritage and lives and works on Noongar country in Western Australia. He is an experimental performance artist, ritual practitioner and choreographer of movement, temporary ritual and imagined realties. His practice is influenced by his two cultural histories- indigeneity and disability and the hybridization of the two with particular interest in the aesthetics of the disabled body and also that of the colonized body. As ritual practitioner he has an interest in durational work that allows the body to undergo and manifest energetic transformations that oscillate between the world of now and the hereafter.

Joshua's work has been shown nationally and internationally and has been commissioned for various events and institutions such as the Undercover Artist Festival (AU), Yirramboi Festival (AU), Next Wave Festival (AU), APAM (AU), Short Cuts (AU), MoveMe Festival (AU) SuperCell Festival of Contemporary Dance (AU) In Situ (AU) The First Nations Dialogues in New York (US), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) (AU), The Pickle Factory (IND), National Museum of Australia (AU) , RMIT Gallery (AU) and the Kier Choreographic Award (AU), in which he was the first WA artist selected as a finalist for the award since its inception in 2014. He is the creator of two solo works, ‘Monster’ and ‘Jupiter Orbiting’. His current work The Reckoning is collaborative project that aims to address the colonial history of Australia and the traumatic and violent implications it has had upon the bodies and sites of First Nations people. 

Joshua has been artist in residence at HIAP (Helsinki International Arts Program) and the recipient of various grants from both Creative Australia (formerly The Australia Council for the Arts) and DLGSC (formerly DCA). His advocacy work in the disability space encompasses representation on both a national and international level and he has been invited to speak on this topic at prestigious events such as ISPA (International Society of Performing Arts), The Meeting Place, Arts Activated NSW and most recently as a foundation artist for Alter State  presented in partnership with Arts Centre Melbourne and Arts Access Victoria (AAV). His advocacy position has explored the roles and relationships between dance/performance and the disabled body and most recently the intersection of First Nations culture and disability.