DAVID PLEDGER

David Pledger is a contemporary artist, writer, curator, producer and thinker working within and between the performing, visual and media arts in Australia, Asia and Europe. His live performances, installations, interactive artworks, documentaries, digital art, ideas and discursive events have been presented in books, journals, magazines, museums, galleries, arts centres, a city car-park, an abandoned stables, a cattle yard, a suburban house, hotels in Surfers Paradise, a Slovenian film studio and the Australian Institute of Sport. His work is notable for engaging publics in productive and provocative ways. From his initial practice, live performance, he has developed a cross-disciplinary dramaturgy in which a central platform is engaging with artists across artforms and experts from social, scientific, academic and philanthropic fields. He operates within mentoring, practice-based, pedagogical and presentation contexts.

A prolific and respected writer, he has been commissioned by Sydney Opera House, Playbox Theatre, Theatreworks, Circe Films, SBS Independent, Victoria Commissions, Currency House and Melbourne Festival for the Major Festivals Initiative. His play Blowback was short-listed for the 2005 Louis Esson Prize for Drama by the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards as was his screenplay for the interactive film Eavesdrop for the Inaugural New Media Writing (AWGIEs). His 2013 Platform Paper (Currency House), Re-Valuing the Artist in the New World Order, went into a second print-run in 2018.