“ Emerging from the wreckage of isolation and ruin , I begin the process of taking off the mask to uncover a vision that is intrinsically familiar yet seldom spoken aloud amidst the dust and rubble of past endeavours sitting patiently in the landscape of my mind ”
Richard James Hall is a performance artist from Newcastle Upon Tyne, who also works with a variety of disciplines and media, including installation, textiles and written text.
Stemming from practices of improvisation, site-responsive work and collaborative exploration, they work through a series of sensory and social gestures, such as the plucking of hair that is then knotted by hand to the personal language used by the artist who then chants the seemingly meaningless words.
Previously travelling and working primarily as a performance artist before the pandemic , their practice was slowly building up and getting attention , and throughout the early part of the pandemic , they were keeping up the practice through live stream performances that were shown on Instagram weekly until they needed to take a necessary break from making performance ; it wasn’t until they were helping set-up the Sally Madge retrospective exhibition “Nowhere Better Than This Place” ( NCA , 2023 ) that they started to realise that they were stuck trying to capture what they were interested about back then , instead of making work that they are interested in now.
They are currently focusing on the development and creation of new work through the lens of their autistic experience ; By being able to articulate and consolidate visually the interiority of their autistic experience through processes of drawing , writing , print making and video performance alongside a collection of found objects , images and recordings of sensory phenomena that catch their attention to build up a larger body of work.
Contact Details:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @dickjameshall
Stemming from practices of improvisation, site-responsive work and collaborative exploration, they work through a series of sensory and social gestures, such as the plucking of hair that is then knotted by hand to the personal language used by the artist who then chants the seemingly meaningless words.
Previously travelling and working primarily as a performance artist before the pandemic , their practice was slowly building up and getting attention , and throughout the early part of the pandemic , they were keeping up the practice through live stream performances that were shown on Instagram weekly until they needed to take a necessary break from making performance ; it wasn’t until they were helping set-up the Sally Madge retrospective exhibition “Nowhere Better Than This Place” ( NCA , 2023 ) that they started to realise that they were stuck trying to capture what they were interested about back then , instead of making work that they are interested in now.
They are currently focusing on the development and creation of new work through the lens of their autistic experience ; By being able to articulate and consolidate visually the interiority of their autistic experience through processes of drawing , writing , print making and video performance alongside a collection of found objects , images and recordings of sensory phenomena that catch their attention to build up a larger body of work.
Contact Details:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @dickjameshall
ARTIST CV
Exhibition /
“Traitement: Ne Me Pas Touchez; Vestiges d’une Hantise” - [Installation piece for] Now That’s What I Call Art 3 - The Auxiliary (Middlesbrough) - 2023
Solo performance work /
“Lifting/ Gathering/ Shifting/ Binding” - No Trace Without Resistance - Star & Shadow Cinema (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2021
“AUTOS/FLECTIONS" - Tempting Failure - Front Rooms (Croydon, London) - 2018
"Untitled (Autos/Narcissus)" - FLARE 3 - Vane Gallery (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
“BYZYPOVULIFEGE" - Left Leg Gallery - Northern Charter (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
"XYZYGESOZYRIHIROHI" - Neon Arts - (Hexham, UK) - 2017
"Untitled" - INTERAKCJE XVI - (Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland) - 2014
Collaborative | Group performance work /
various projects - Noize Choir - Tyne and Wear - 2015 to present
“after the fire” - Constance Humphries (organiser / performer) , Nicola Hunter (performer) , Deborah Nash (performer) , Sarah Riseborough (performer) and Juli Watson (performer) - GAS contemporary (North Shields, UK) - 2020
“ Unearthing “ - art project by Dawn Felicia Knox (organiser / artist) and performing alongside Phallictite (music group) - Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2019
"Inclinations Of Love" - Sebastian Ruiz Bartilson (co-orgniser / performer) - Kommunity (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
"Generated Image Format” - Non-Tiopia [Benedikte Espri, Cha Blasco and Sebastian Ruiz Bartilson] (organisers / performers) ,Laurel Jay Carpenter (performer) and Catherine Cary (performer) - Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2017
"Diphone" - James Watts (organiser / co-performer) - Hexham Abbey (Hexham, UK) - 2017
Engagement work /
Dr. Judy Thomas (facilitator / lead teacher) - Workshop assistant with school groups - Newcastle Contemporary Art , Newcastle Upon Tyne - February 2023
Newcastle Contemporary Art - Installation | Curatorial assistant for the Sally Madge retrospective show “Nowhere Better Than This Place” - Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2023
Janina Sabaliauskaite - Photography model - Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2017 to present
Equinox: Day of Public Action for Freedom and Democracy (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - Organiser - Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2017 / 2018 / 2019
George Stewart (art event co-ordinator) - Life model - Cobalt, Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2019
Francesca Steele - Artist assistant - London - 2019
James Unsworth - Photography model - Breeze Creatives, Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2019
PAN: Indoor (with Martine Viale , Ciara Lenihan and Sarah Riseborough) - Organiser / facilitator - Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2018
PAN | Performance Art Newcastle - Organiser / performer - Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2018
Francesca Steele (and other artists) - Support assistant - FIX 17 festival, Catalyst Arts (Belfast, N.I.) - 2017
Janina Sabaliauskaite and Jade Sweeting (curators) - Invigilator for “On Our Backs: An Archive” - Newbridge Project (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
Sally Madge (lead artist) and Dave Fudge (artist / teacher) - Assistant artist - Barbara Priestman school (Sunderland) , Baltic Contemporary (Gateshead) and Northumbria University (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
Mikhail Karikis (artist / director) "The Endeavour" - Cameo role (with Noize Choir) - Tyneside Cinema , Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2015
Participation /
“Well Beings - Writing The Body Through Illness And Pain” - Dr. Marieke Bigg - Online writing workshop - 2022
“Fat Performance” research group, LADA DIY 2020/21 - Gillie Kleinman (lead artist) and Dr. Charlotte Cooper (lead researcher) - Online conference call - 2020
Writing group - Daniel Oliver (facilitator) - Online conference call - 2020
Studio holder - Newbridge Project (artist initiative) - 2019 to present
Live Art Survey research gathering - Live Art Survey (Team commissioned by Live Art Development Agency) - Dance City, Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2019
Vocal improvisation workshop - Maggie Nichols - Northern Charter, Newcastle Upon Tyne - 2019
Performance open lab - PAGE (organisers / performers) - Greenwich, London - 2019
Performance open lab - PAGE (organisers / performers) - Crystal Palace, London - 2018
Butoh Workshop - Constance Humphries - Space Six (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2018
Open Lab - Non-Tiopia [Benedikte Espri, Cha Blasco and Sebastian Ruiz Bartilson] - Dance City (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
“The Echo Chamber” workshop - Dawn Felicia Knox - FLARE 3, Vane Gallery (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
“Co-Arising” workshop - Denys Blacker and Ocells al Cap - FLARE 3, Vane Gallery (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
"Dynamic Emancipation Through Imagery” workshop - Harriet Plewis - FLARE 3, Vane Gallery (Newcastle Upon Tyne) - 2017
Performance open lab / “Being In Public” - Bbeyond - Belfast, N.I. - 2017
"Performing as Duo” - Ali Al Fatlawi & Wathiq Al Ameri (Artists / facilitators) and Bbeyond (organiser) - Pollen Gallery (Belfast, N.I.) - 2017
Performance open lab - PAGE (organisers / performers) - London - 2017
Exhibition | Publication | Online contributions /
'One of the most important pieces of performance' : responding to Welter [ Written text in response to Victoria Gray’s “Welter” (2021) ] - Shape Arts [ https://www.shapearts.org.uk/blog/one-of-the-most-important-pieces-of-performance-responding-to-welter ] - Online (UK) | March 2022
Experimental Wednesdays (09/06/2021) [ Performance video | 25 mins 37 secs ] - Until Magazine (issue 10): On Disability [ https://untilmagazine.wordpress.com/issue-10-on-dissability/ ] - Online (Victoria B.C. ,Canada) | February 2022
“AudioVisual Cultures” podcast interview ( initial broadcast on Slack’s Radio as part of Newbridge Project’s “Blazing New Worlds” call out) [ Audio podcast interview | approx. 30 mins ] - AudioVisual Cultures ( Dr Paula Blair , host and director ) [ https://audiovisualcultures.com ], Slack’s Radio ( Online radio broadcast, Tyne and Wear based ) [ https://slacks.world ] and Newbridge Project ( Artist initiative and programmer ) - Online | January 2022
Experimental Wednesdays [ Series of online performance to video works | 2020 - 2021 ] - Instagram [ @dickjameshall ] and Vimeo [ https://vimeo.com/user73522778 ] - Online | 2020 - 2021
32 [ Compilation video with work by Suman Kibiraj , Leslie Castellano and Richard James Hall | 4 mins 55 secs ] - Ensemble Ouvert [ https://www.ensembleouvert.com/2018-20-courant-32.html ] - Online project by Silvy Paned-Raymond | October 2020