Amrita Hepi, The Anguilla pursuit (2021), video. 4:31. Commissioned by Sydney Opera House and C-Lab, Taiwan with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

The Anguilla Pursuit takes inspiration from migration of the freshwater eels, Anguilla Anguilla, who travel over over 2 000km from New Caledonia to freshwaters of the Royal Botanic Gardens. In this split channel work, Hepi personifies their journey home through the Sydney Opera House and into the waters that surround in a dynamic chase scene. Through metaphor and allusion, Hepi’s work explores the physical and psychological dimensions of the 'oceanic feeling'.

Artist/Director: Amrita Hepi
Producer/A.D: Zoe Theodore
Videographer/Editor: Luke Smith
Styling and Costume: Romy Safiyah

Amrita Hepi

Born, Townsville of Bundjulung/Ngapuhi territories, Australia. Lives and works in Naarm, Melbourne, Australia. Hepi is an award winning artist.Her current practice is concerned with dance as social function performed within galleries, performance spaces, video art and digital technologies. She engages in forms of historical fiction and hybridity —especially those that arise under empire— to investigate the bodies relationship to personal histories and archive. Amrita is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

In 2020/2018, she was the recipient of the People’s Choice Award for the Keir Choreographic Award for RINSE and won FBI Radio’s BEST ARTIST. In 2020/2021 she was commissioned to make work by Kaldor public art projects, Serpentine Galleries UK, South East Dance Brighton UK, ACCA (AustralianCentre for Contemporary Art), Gertrude Contemporary, and Art Gallery of NSW. In all of these commissions she demonstrated a rigorous ability to bring uncanny choreographic and performative thinking into making. This has included with chat bots/A.I programmed as a socratic yet poetic questionnaires that offer a dancing response, a never ending text script with iphones, as well as works created in the theatre such as RINSE. These works are continuing to be programmed in dance venues and in galleries around the country.