About
Breach – Freefall 2011 Oxford Art Factory, Sydney. Photo Kat Sapera
Julie Vulcan is an independent Australian artist, researcher, and writer working across multiple forms. Creative outcomes include objects, performance & installation, text & digital media, and durational & site-responsive work. Deep research processes underpin much of her work developed through intensive residencies, participatory laboratories and interdisciplinary exchange. Alongside her solo practice Julie is a facilitator, collaborator, mentor, citizen scientist and environmental dark advocate.
Current projects are embedded in dark ecologies, relational practices, and speculative fictions as tools to imagine ongoing human and more than human worlds. The greater part of this work sits under the banner project WishingDARK. Ongoing since 2012 presentations include Night Drifts 2023, DARKpassage 2020, GoingDARK 2019, DARKlight 2017, and DARKbody 2017. Adjacent to these projects Julie undertook a Masters of Research 2018-2019 followed by a Doctor of Philosophy 2020-2025. Her thesis titled Touching Dark: Matterings of More-than-human Worlds was conferred in 2026.
In 2019 a wildfire swept through the home she shares with a multitude of critters, creatures and plants during the Australian 2019/2020 Black Summer. A series of personal works followed in response: DARKswell 2022, #afterthefire #daybyday 2020-21, Rescript 2020 and Dark Interludes 2020 (in collaboration with Michelle St Anne and Living Room Theatre).
The suite of works Bloodstock 2018, I Stand In 2011-2017, RIMA 2015-16 and Drift 2014 explored ways to recognise and subsequently address or dismantle socially constructed borders through matters of care.
The veracity of mediated memory, formulated histories and the motivations behind how we remember, record and re-write our actions, bodies and traces – past, present and future underlie the Redress series 2009-2018, Un/disclosed 2008-09, and the Power of Constraint trilogy (Trawl – Harbour – Wend) 2007-09.
Julie also creates alter-egos and one-off performances that engage subversive or wicked humour. Her highly stylised and visual aesthetic has appeared in urban and regional sites, theatres, galleries, windows, events, clubs, online and sometimes unexpected places.
LATEST NEWS
Nurturing a DARK ecology
BIOGRAPHY
Rapid Pulse, Chicago 2014
Julie Vulcan has toured her work nationally and internationally both solo and as part of performance collectives. Selected work and tours over the last decade include Night Drifts Carriageworks AUS 2023, DARKswell Wired Open Day 2022, Rescript Sydney Festival AUS 2021, Bloodstock Metro Arts Gallery Brisbane AUS 2018, DARKlight_I:utterings Metro Arts Brisbane AUS 2017, DARKbody Wired Open Day Muttama NSW 2017, I Stand In Taking Place MAI Montréal CANADA 2017, Deathfest Metro Arts Brisbane AUS 2016, Venice International Performance Art Week ITALY 2014, Performatorium Regina CANADA 2014 and SPILL festival of Performance London UK 2013; Drift at Festival of Live Art Melbourne and Metro Arts Brisbane AUS 2014; Redress – Rapid Pulse Festival Chicago USA 2014.
Julie is one half of the exploratory lab SQUIDSILO, a duo working across physical and virtual platforms. RIMA, their most complex work to date, was presented at Arts House Melbourne 2016, End(s) of Electronic Literature Festival Bergen NORWAY 2015 and the Lock-Up Newcastle AUS 2015.
In 2014 Julie founded base-metal – a platform for performance/live art exchange, dialogue and presentation as one outcome from a Cultural Leadership Grant awarded by the Australia Council for the Arts in 2012. From 2010 – 2014, Julie was the Associate Director and subsequent Artistic Director/CEO at PACT centre for emerging artists, Sydney. She directed the PACT Ensemble production Harvest 2013 and co-directed with Cat Jones Beguiled 2011 and Unsettlings 2010.
A UNSW College of Fine Arts graduate (now UNSW Art and Design), her early video installations (1988 – 92) investigated time, gender, memory and place. These works were presented in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth by the 4th and 7th Australian International Video Festival, ARX 3, Experimenta and the Performance Space Sydney amongst others. This work is currently archived at www.scanlines.net – Video Art in Australia since the 1960’s. Julie’s video installation work informed her transition into live art and performance.
Julie has been a core member of several performance and live art collectives, including Unreasonable Adults, Frumpus, and Icarus. She has performed in Black Market with PVI Collective 2015, Finale 2007/8 with Pacitti Company UK, ERTH’s Sydney Festival commission Balconies 2003 and in the films and video art works of Deborah Pollard Use By Date 2025, Sam James Dreamshelving 2011 and Anna Davis A/PROXY[MATE] ENCOUNTERS 2006. She has contributed to the works of many artists including Jason Sweeney, WeiZen Ho, PVI Collective, Barbara Campbell, Deborah Pollard, Hancock & Kelly live, Leisa Shelton, Cat Jones and Panther.
Julie’s writing includes reviews for Realtime Arts Australia, essays, creative writing and research appearing in art, independent, and academic publications. She is currently writing a collection of short speculative fiction.