“no rock no flower”
Andrea Illés
6 Sept → 25 Oct 2025
West Space
West Space presents a the first major solo exhibition by Andrea Illés. This durational work is the culmination of our multi-part commitment to her performance-based practice, and consolidates her growing reputation as an important new media and performance artist in this country’s cultural landscape.
Andrea Illés is a performance artist exploring stigma and self-concept. During her recent residency in the West Space Studio, Andrea undertook a mentorship with West Space to develop this work.
The first iteration began as a durational live-streamed performance, presented as part of Stranger than fiction, that grappled with the Sisyphean task of image-making as representation of the self. For three weeks, Andrea performed in her studio, viewable to audiences in-person and on screens in the gallery, our computers and phones.
no rock no flower brings dance, sound and videography to West Space's main gallery, exploring the hyper-vigilant relationship that trans women have to the images they make with their bodies.
Adapted from research into cultural mythology and the tension between its transcription and transmutability, the work will entwine translations of ancient events with the artist’s experiences of love, desire, identification, and her relationship with her own image.
Andrea Illés is a performance artist whose auto portraits explore the relational chasm between self and other. Merging dance, text, sound, and video, her enquiry emerges from the agony and bliss she feels being perceived. Often working with states of overwhelm, Andrea is interested in the possibilities found when bodies fail. Andrea was in residence in the West Space Studio February to August 2024.
