Alison Ward
2009 Swing Space Resident, 77 Water Street
Alison Ward’s performances, sculptures and photographs create a world populated by masked creatures that struggle with each other and challenge their audience through the use of overt sexuality and physical humor. By combining animal and human elements, Ward creates scenarios that simultaneously exist in the realms of physical comedy and the unknown. She often depicts her characters in several different ways, through a combination of photographs, sculptures, video and performance.
Ward received a BS in Philosophy at the State University of New York at Purchase, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Her exhibition venues include Haven Arts, Dumbo Arts Center, and the Bronx Museum, all in New York and Liquid Blue Gallery and Red Dot Project, in Miami, as well as the Centre de Cultura Contemporánia de Barcelona Museum in Spain and Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, England.
Ward has performed at Participant Inc., Smack Mellon Gallery, Dumbo Arts Center, and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She has also participated in residencies at Raw Space in Australia, the Artists in the Marketplace program at the Bronx Museum, and was a visiting artist at New York University, through LMCC’s Workspace program.
Recently, Ward was awarded a generous grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to perform a piece on Coney Island during the summer of 2009.
At 77 Water Street, Alison will work on costumes and an installation for The Beastly Beauty, a piece that is a farcical battle between two characters that embody different elements of beauty and the grotesque. It combines elements of Baroque theatre with slapstick comedy and professional wrestling to produce the effect of a live action Punch and Judy show. Humorous and elaborate, it combines raw physicality with ornate decadence, juxtaposing Baroque-era costumes and sets with wrestling moves and slapstick physicality, bringing together the high and the low.
