“no rock no flower”
Andrea Illés
6 Sept → 25 Oct 2025
Gallery
West Space presents the first major solo exhibition by new media and performance artist Andrea Illés.
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.
This project forms the culmination of West Space's multi-part commitment to Illés' practice. The first iteration emerged as a durational performance grappling with the Sisyphean task of image-making as representation of the self. sorry I was so hungry unfolded in the West Space Studio in 2024, while Illés was our artist in residence.
Andrea Illés: no rock no flower is a West Space Commission supported by Creative Australia and Melbourne University through the Victorian College of the Arts. Mentorship support by V Barratt and Helen Grogan.
Andrea Illés is a Naarm/Melbourne based new media and 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.
