SELECTED REVIEWS : ANITO

“ANITO is an exemplar of the power of dance and art to deconstruct outdated and dangerous colonial and binary frameworks. Yet calling the performance simply a dance piece would be reductive. This is so much more..”

Jessi Ryan, Performance Review: ANITO, Rising Festival, Artshouse Full Article: https://www.artshub.com.au/news/reviews/performance-review-anito-rising-festival-arts-house

Note: Justin Shoulder Interview from 23:04, fantastic interview with Fiona McGregor prior

Endurance Act: performance art in Australia (link to ABC website)

INTERVIEW LA MANUTENTION PERFORMER IN RESIDENCE: PALAIS DE TOKYO, PARIS 2019

SELECTED REVIEWS : CARRION

“Shoulder’s performance has an astonishing intensity, a sense of ritual and precision of movement that reaches deep into the subconscious. I found myself simultaneously aware of the artifice of his creations – the illusions don’t depend on our not knowing how they’re done – and utterly seduced by their compelling realities. It’s a remarkable show..”

Alison Croggon, Carrion: The Intimacy of Strangeness, Witness Performance Full Article: https://witnessperformance.com/carrion-the-intimacy-of-strangeness/

“The creatures both are, and are not, recognisable. They possess multiple qualities that flicker in and out of sight, depending on how they move. The effect is mirage-like. A giant, innocuous-looking grub or butterfly pupa has a sensual cleft running down its centre, which folds open to reveal a smooth human back. A long-limbed, masked figure that wears its bones on the outside is simultaneously endearing in its curious exploration of the stage, and somehow sinister, with its gash-like smile and croaky, staccato vocalisations. I often don’t know quite what I’m seeing, sometimes don’t even know if it’s possible to be seeing what I’m seeing.”

Cleo Mees, Carrion: Magnificent Mutancy, Realtime 8 Nov, 2017 Full Article: https://www.realtime.org.au/liveworks-carrion-magnificent-mutancy/

“I left feeling a strange sense of my own belonging in the world. That Carrion the character evolved and de-evolved, taking on drastically different forms as the work progressed left me thinking that the way we, especially in the West, perceive of evolution and time is absurd and impoverished. Who are we to say we have reached our “final” evolutionary form, especially as we go about effectively destroying the world around us. We need to change, perhaps go backwards, but to believe this change is impossible is to be stuck in tired ideas. We need something new.”

Karla Livingstone-Pardy, Review Carrion: Artshouse, ArtsHub 9, July 2018 Full Article: https://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/opinions-and-analysis/performing-arts/karla-livingstone-pardy/review-carrion-arts-house-256031

PODCAST: DELVING INTO DANCE

“IN MANY RESPECTS I STARTED DOING PERFORMANCE AS A REACTION TO HAVING A VERY DIGITAL PRACTICE, WORKING WITH IMAGES AND I WANTED TO PHYSICALLY FEEL MORE ALIVE IN THIS REALITY.”

LISTEN HERE: https://www.delvingintodance.com/podcast/justin-shoulder

Photo: ORAN9E.

The secret corners of a spectacle: Chen Tianzhuo’s ASIANDOPEBOYS and Justin Shoulder at Galaxy SOHO, Beijing

“Modernsky Lab is a world away from the Sydney club scene, the histories and contemporary politics of which are central to Shoulder’s practice which, with his collective The Glitter Militia, the artist sees as part of a queer ecology, co-creating spaces for performative expression and expressions themselves. Yet the fact that this context was displaced in Beijing did not take from his performance. Rather, the future-gaze of Shoulder’s post-human being resonated with a different kind of urgency, to a new generation of aspiring local shape-shifters.”

Joanna Bayndrian, 4A Papers, 15 September 2016 Full Article: http://www.4a.com.au/4a_papers_article/joanna-bayndrian/

SELECTED REVIEWS : THE RIVER EATS

“The River Eats is a beautiful exploration of the estrangements of desire, the hunger towards wholeness that inhabits the divided self, that is at once wholly contemporary and yet reaches back to impulses much more ancient than our civilisation. Truly astonishing.”

Alison Croggon, Next Wave: Monster Body, Dewey Dell, Justin Shoulder, Theatre Notes, June 2012 Full Article: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2012/06/next-wave-monster-body-dewey-dell.html

Johanna Bear, Art Asia Pacific, 1 March 2023 Full Article: https://artasiapacific.com/issue/club-ate-mythologies-of-movement