Olga Tomalik
Performance Artist
My Past Projects
Hello and welcome to my work. Each and every piece has carved its score into my practice
Prague, Prague Quadrennial, 2023
This immersive walking performance combines the unique properties of audio enhanced, headphone theatre with the organic story telling of the surroundings that comes with site specific theatre.
Based on the book “Memory Police”, Originally published in Japanese in 1994, the book’s recent translation resonated with us on issues of totalitarianism and resistance, loss and community the performance is a reaction to the post-pandemic, late capitalist, right-wing populist, climate emergency era that we find ourselves living through.
Audience members are given headphones, placed into small groups and guided along the banks of the Vltava river. Through their headphones audiences are immersed in the world of the performance through text, music & soundscapes. Through a pre-recorded and live interaction, the performance layers the fictitious world of The Memory Police and Prague’s birds, people, objects and landscapes who become unknowing actors in the narrative.
2024 - 2.5h (or until completion)
This performance serves as an exploration into the realm of artistic expression through sculpting. Applying drama therapy techniques to my style I challenge the convention that art’s value comes from the outcome - whilst I focus on the therapeutic value of the process.
I have translated these thematic inspirations into a meditative undertaking, wherein I engage in the sculptural manifestation of healing through the reassembly of shattered ceramic.
I intentionally use ink to leave a visible trail of fingerprints across the evolving piece as a nod to the failed endeavours to mend the piece.
December 2023
Set against the haunting aftermath of the first US nuclear tests on Bikini, an atoll in The Marshall Islands, our story unfolds almost a century later amidst the chaos of WWIII in 2043. Tragedy strikes as a group of women and children, fleeing to the safety of the underground British Commune in Okinawa, Japan, meets a devastating fate.
Based on the characters from William Golding's timeless tale, we plunge into a harrowing psychological odyssey with Ralph, Piggy, and the forsaken boys. While maintaining the essence of the beloved narrative, this production delves deeper, exploring the intricacies of friendship amid tumultuous growing pains. The performance intertwines enigmatic movement sequences within a visceral, immersive setting.
October 2023
Labour of Love presents insights from gardening practice undertaken over four years between 2019-23 at Chiswick House and Gardens, the birthplace of the English Landscape Movement. By drawing on the history of dance and embodied movement, this practice-based research approaches historic gardens as choreographic objects (William Forsythe) and conceives gardening as a form of choreographic dwelling (Gretchen Schiller/Sarah Rubidge).
It tests how choreographic thinking could permeate creative practice and generate new knowledge about labour and social capital involved in the care and maintenance of historic landscape designs. This practice is set to challenge how gardens can be experienced. It explores choreography as an embodied way of organising knowledge to rethink historic landscapes as objects of material culture and 'meeting places of nature and human labour (Chandra Mukerii)
2023
Bound by the confines of her own existence, a woman grapples with the weight of manifested trauma that haunts her every step. In a serendipitous encounter, she crosses paths with a curious mystical mushroom creature, harbouring aspirations to expand its kingdom
June 2024
Exploring my Great Great Fathers tragic story of sacrifice that places him into one of the most notorious concentration camps in Europe, I built a staircase structure and ran for 15 minutes to imitate a fraction of the experience victims of the camps endured, in this instance i based my task off of the 'Stairway to Hell' - a staircase with 182 steps that prisoners were forced to drag rubble up
2023 - Eel Pie Island, London
After abruptly waking up in a strangely familiar setting, Gabriella realizes that she must fight to keep her memories. A piece about loss and identity, this adaptation of memory police will immerse you in a dystopian world where the memories that sustain your integrity get ripped away right before your eyes.
An adaptation of ‘Memory Police’ by Yōko Ogawa
May 2024 - Riverside studio, London
This performance serves as an exploration into the realm of artistic expression through sculpting. Applying drama therapy techniques to my style I challenge the convention that art’s value comes from the outcome - whilst I focus on the therapeutic value of the process.
I have translated these thematic inspirations into a meditative undertaking, wherein I engage in the sculptural manifestation of healing through the reassembly of shattered ceramic.
I intentionally use ink to leave a visible trail of fingerprints across the evolving piece as a nod to the failed endeavours to mend the piece.
June 2024
‘Morbid resignation’ - the reluctant acceptance to an undesirable yet inescapable reality
In this piece I use slime medium to evoke the visceral experience of bodily deterioration. By enveloping myself in layers of solidifying gel, I seek to encapsulate the awareness to one’s inevitable breakdown.
2023
This performance explores the intersection of therapeutic practice and artistic expression through a series of low-skill, high-sensitivity exercises. Drawing upon principles of embodied memory and performance art therapy, the artist engages in durational acts aimed at revisiting and modifying traumatic
experiences stored within the body. The performance delves into the process of reconsolidating memories through repetitive sensorimotor exposure within a controlled therapeutic setting. Utilizing autobiographical elements and influenced by artists such as Marina Abramovic, the artist confronts personal traumas while inviting audiences to witness the transformative journey