An opera and exhibition by artist-musicians, Ravioli Me Away
9 February to 14 April.
For more exhibition photos, click the image above.

To launch our 30th anniversary, we are delighted to present The View From Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis, a bold and ambitious immersive live work and exhibition by Ravioli Me Away (Sian Dorrer, Rosie Ridgway and Alice Theobald). The work will launch our 2019 programme through which we will be celebrating Wysing’s 30th anniversary.

The View From Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis transforms Wysing’s gallery in its entirety into a multimedia exhibition that includes new sculptural works and costumes alongside a three-screen video installation. Gallery visitors are able to engage with the objects and costumes which relate to the characters and themes of the opera.

The surrealist, multi-media opera takes the audience on an audio enhanced journey as The Protagonist (the soul of humanity) searches for a body that can give it meaning. The Protagonist expresses the paradoxical sentiment that everyone is the main character in their own life. The View From Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis is a colourful, comi-tragic take on individual and collective aspiration, explored and expressed through a genre-diverse score and the ever-present voice of The Narrator, a soprano singer situated amidst the audience.

Ravioli Me Away have been in-residence at Wysing across the past year developing the work, alongside a large number of collaborators, in the Wysing Polyphonic recording studio and through public workshops. To accompany the exhibition and opera, a limited-edition vinyl record of the soundtrack, with an accompanying songbook, has been released on the Wysing Polyphonic record label.

A second performance of the opera will take place at Wysing on 30 March 2019, 6-8pm (sold out). The exhibition will be open 10 February to 14 April, 12–5pm daily

Access
If you have questions about access needs for the performance or the exhibition, please email Wysing’s Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org

Ravioli Me Away
Un-defined by genre, Ravioli Me Away’s high energy, dangerously ambitious and delusional jazzy-post-pop-punk-hip-funk sound with stylistically erratic motifs span all-known past, present and future human cultures and sub-cultures. This is social realism soaked through with a heady dose of fantasy, idiosyncratic poetics, keyboard flurries and vocal vicissitudes described as “vintage drag-queen Bananarama

Youtube footage played with twice the sass and in double time with an incredulous broadband connection reflected in the eyes of a much overworked and downright exhausted Julie Burchill on acid”.

Ravioli Me Away are Sian Dorrer, Rosie Ridgway and Alice Theobald. Since forming in January 2013, they have performed extensively at various events, venues, festivals and galleries in the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic and Holland. In 2015 they supported The Fall at Brixton Electric and have also appeared on radio shows on 6 Music, Resonance FM and NTS Radio. In 2014 Ravioli Me Away released their first 12” LP The Inevitable Album on God Job Records and a Limited Edition tape of live recorded material produced by Ben Wallers of The County Teasers/The REBEL on Neen Records. In 2016, they released their second Album Living Is A Myth with Upset The Rhythm. They have performed twice in the Wysing Polyphonic music festival, in 2014 and 2015, and Alice Theobald was an artist-in-residence at Wysing in 2014.

Project Collaborators 

Tom Hirst is a musician based in London and currently the sole practitioner behind Design A Wave, his electronic synth-pop music project. 

Dean Rodney Jr. is the songwriter and vocalist for the band The Fish Police, who formed at Heart n Soul, a creative arts charity who provide opportunities and support the talents of people with learning disabilities and help share their art widely.  

Onyeka Igwe is an artist filmmaker and researcher using dance, voice, archive and text exploring physical body and geographical place as sites of cultural and political meaning. 

Eothen Stearn is a Feminist Queer artist interested in craft, memory, emotions and modalities of speech. They work with performance, sound, sculpture and costume. They are in the Rotterdam based band Difficult.

Siobhan Mooney is a Mezzo Soprano singer who has worked with Grange Park Opera, Pilmico Opera and staged collaborative shows with performance artists Dickie Beau and Lisa Lee. 

Dan Mitchell is an artist and performer living and working in London. He is a founding member of Poster Studio (1994 - 1997) and the publisher of Hard Mag. 

Ben Wallers is a musician and performer who has been releasing music under various guises since 1995 including ‘THE REBEL’, who have released 31 albums. 

Scott Bradbury is the enigmatic frontman of the London band post punk band Chips for the Poor. He is a trained actor and has performed in Alice Theobald’s video works since 2014. 

Victor Jakeman is a musician, performer and member of Claw Marks, Insecure Men, Whitby Bay and also collaborates with artists Pil and Galia Kollectiv on the performance art project WE. 

Adam Sinclair is a 3D animation artist and has made works for Ed Atkins and Tai Shani.

Jack Barraclough is a film director, editor and animator. Jack has made music videos in bands including Sacred Paws and Franz Ferdinand and directed The Goblin Town music video for Ravioli Me Away.

Aymie Backler is a Production Manager specialising in performance and durational art works. She has worked with Siobhan Davies, Katie Paterson and John Cale.

Charlotte Poulet is a sound technician, sound artist and performer who has worked with bands including Wire, Suicide, The Liars, Throbbing Gristle, The Pop Group and currently with industrial pioneers Test Department. 

Kathryn Gray is a musician from Leeds and makes music as Mia La Metta, Empress Maude and as a member of the bands Sherbert Tripod and Beards. She is also a member of the Lumen Audio Visual Collective.

Patrick Moran plays drums and sings for black metal band WHITBY BAY, he also publishes the metal fanzine Buried.

Robert Prouse is a digital A/V tinkerer and dilettante programmer. Bitten by a radioactive spider from Aldermaston’s Atomic Weapons Establishment as a child, he has been doing weird stuff ever since.

The View From Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis performance will tour to The Box at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth (11 May), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (18 May) and Block Universe at the Albany, London (1 June). 

The View From Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis is produced by Ravioli Me Away and Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge. Touring and commissioned in partnership with BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art, Gateshead; The Box, Plymouth; Block Universe, London, with additional support from the Albany, London; Heart n Soul, London; Nottingham Contemporary and The Barbican Theatre, Plymouth. The project is supported with a Grant for the Arts using public funding by Arts Council England.

The vinyl record of The View From Behind the Futuristic Rose Trellis is available here.

Press

"Everywhere you look in the work, there is this extrapolation from the mundane to the extraordinary. The crazy paving floor is encrusted with crumpled images of a takeaway Costa cup, Monster energy drinks and Marlboro cigarette packets. Bin bags become our seats as this world swirls around us, we slip in and out of other people's dreams and desires and experience their daily grind. But we are not simply looking in, we are also looking out."
Niki Russell, Art Monthly, March 2019.

To read Niki Russell's review in Art Monthly, click here.

To read Tessa Norton's review in The Wire, click here.