“no rock no flower”
Andrea Illés
6 Sept → 25 Oct 2025
Gallery
West Space presents the first major solo exhibition by Andrea Illés as the culmination of our multi-part commitment to her emerging practice, and consolidating her growing reputation as an important new media and performance artist in this country's cultural landscape.
no rock no flower explores 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, no rock no flower entwines translations of ancient events with Illés' experiences of love, desire, identification, and her relationship with her own image.
The first iteration of no rock no flower emerged as the durational performance sorry I was so hungry. For three weeks, Illés performed in the West Space Studio as part of her residency and taking place within the exhibition Stranger than fiction. The work grappled with the Sisyphean task of image-making as representation of the self, and was viewable in-person, on screens in the gallery, and on personal devices at any hours of the day.
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 and, often working with states of overwhelm, Andrea is interested in the possibilities found when bodies fail.
