Thank You For Holding is a new single-channel video installation from Blake Prize winning artist Tina Havelock Stevens as part of Sydney Festival 2021.

Tina Havelock Stevens drums on a raised platform – a raft drawn from pillar to post by her co-performer, Ivey Wawn. Adrift on land, the two performers navigate the rhythms of uncertainty and the chaos of loss and change.

Tina Havelock Stevens conceived Thank You for Holding amidst the relentless tides of anxiety that characterised 2020. Performed in The Clothing Store at Carriageworks last August, her work frames this moment through a filter of timelessness, uncertainty, and hope. As audiences disperse and disassemble for collective safety in a pandemic, the band plays on, solo.

Improvised and urgent, her drumming score reverberates off the architecture, creating a sonic sense of place. Presented as a non-linear performance video, it asserts the extremities of the present as she tunes into the frequencies of time. Reflecting on the power and precarity of human existence, her drumming is a ritual action that ebbs and flows as much as a river, as much as life itself.

Tina Havelock Stevens explores the ambiguities of human nature predominantly through film, performance and installation. Responding to personal narratives, the artist’s work speaks to fragility and survival by drawing connections between historically loaded sites and emotional spaces.

Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham

Producer, Artist, Performer: Tina Havelock Stevens
Co-performer: Ivey Wawn
Co-Director, Director of Photography: Jackie Wolf
Editor: Kathy Drayton
Sound Mix: Bob Scott
Sound Recordist: Matt Syres
Artist Assistant: Anny Mokotow
Camera Assistant, Stills: Bronwyn Rennex
Colourist: Dwaine Hyde
Thank You: Glenn Thompson

Image: Tina Havelock Stevens, Thank You For Holding, 2020 (video still)