Skip to main content

DIY: 2019 – VORTESSA (Lady Helena Vortex and Miss Giovanna Maria Casetta): GILF Island

Pack your cases, ready to embark on a Dark Romance of the ageing self, Exploring, releasing and adoring the inner GILF

Deadline for applications: 2pm, Thursday 4 July
This DIY is supported by Colchester Arts Centre

Project summary

GILF Island is born from a strong reaction to the mega popular TV show Love Island. All Pertaining to the ideal that desire and sex is strictly the domain of  the young. As women who age we are marginalised, our sexual currency is removed and we are left to mourn our younger desirable bodies

GILF (Grandmother I want to Fuck) Island is a safe haven to explore and join us on a process opening up an important dialogue about the socio cultural blocking that arises when negotiating the territory of the ageing body, accepting that we are still sexual creatures, with desire and passion. Learning to love our glorious ageing bodies. Reigniting our sexual currency, being seen and taken seriously as sexually powerful women rather than tired sexiest tropes of the ageing of the Femme Fatal casting off the assumption of how “We seem to be either ashamed of it or turn it into some sort of jokey, slapstick, seaside postcard, pantomime thing or a porny caricature. European women feel sexy their whole lives. Even older women behave like they’re sexually active and attractive.” Viv Albertine

We are inviting a group of artists who identify as older and have experienced, are attracted or relate to the GILF phenomena. To answer our call to look at the dimensions of romance and intimacy, desire and love, their political potential and subversive power. Together we will go on a journey exploring these issues, devising our own rituals, being  architects and high priestesses who darkly manifest romantic radical narcissism, the magic, offering a glimpse of what lies between the light and dark.

How to apply

Applicants are asked to provide a short statement stating why they want to be part of GILF Island and how this DIY will benefit your practice alongside an image of your island look. Please submit your proposal via the link below

Dates, times and location

Dates: Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 September 2019
Location: Colchester, Colchester Arts Centre

The artists

VORTESSA  was born out of a necessity to explore and create work concerning woman who arrive at the wrong side of fifty, encountering  society which immediately marginalises them, removing their sexual currency, taking away their voice and rendering them invisible.  During their recent work it has emerged that older women need to be nurtured, looked after, learn to love their gorgeous ageing bodies, inhabit a safe space to do so and be valued. Founder members are artists  Miss Giovanna Maria Casetta and Lady Helena Vortex who have 35 years experience of working in Live Art , performance and film. met at LADA’s workshop in 2015 “Between Menopause and Old Age” led by Rocio Bolivia and completed a DIY “Help the Aged” in 2016 Casetta and Vortex are currently working on “Madness, Mayhem and the Menopause”  ongoing, processing issues surrounding menopause, desire and mental health.The GILF Crest Files was premiered for Deep Trash Romance CUNTemporary 2018 and as part of the GraceGraceGrace Book launch at LADA March 2019 and is an on going investigation into sexual currency, desire, power and the dark romance of the soul. Writing a Manifesto about ageing on our terms, which includes contributions from older artists especially those who have radical practices and embrace the punk aesthetic, we will not go quietly!

Giovanna Maria Casetta is an Artist and Educator, the constant theme running through her practice is the tension between the surface and what lies beneath. The fragility of the physical and psychological self and how our identity is compromised through societies unrealistic expectations of what we should be. Casetta’s recent work includes performing A descent into Glamour at Nuit Blanche-Brussels 2018  And the premier of Earth Works at SPILL 2018 which explores the private rituals that Casetta has devised to see her through the dark times,in a world which appears timeless, distant surreal, fleeting and overwhelming.

Lady Helena Vortex is a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. Psychopomp goddess and performer, her practice invests in ideas of risk, dynamics of living, thinking, feeling, dreaming, distinguishing and identifying. Her personal mythology boldly exposed as she subverts traditions of representation, power and sex. LHV’s recent work includes

SPILL Open Festival of Performance (November 2018) ‘Well you tried it just for once…found it alright for kicks ‘A Rampant Lust-Fuelled Hormone-Induced Altered State, Looping Back To Lost Teenage Years. Book.  LHVX as one of the gang of three that is GraceGraceGrace reframes the live art practice in an anthology of those who identify as older, performing rebellious gender/ageing identity. GraceGraceGrace explore gen-age Book Published – March 2019

For questions about this DIY, please contact the artists.

Banner image credit:

Image credit: the artists

Part of DIY: 2019

Professional development projects – BY artists FOR artists – across the UK.

DIY: 2019

DIY

Professional development projects – BY artists FOR artists – across the UK.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Adam Patterson: Green Screen Charivari

DIY

Parading for the right to be unfixed, letting surfaces slip and slide, transgressing horizons, bodies, identities and worlds

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Adriana Disman: The confusing space between

DIY

A residential workshop for multi-racial performance people on an island in the English Channel.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Ania Bas & Amy Pennington: Performance for shy people. Playwriting for dyslexics.

DIY

Two day experiment at performance production by shy people and performance writing by bad spellers.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Bean & Nicola Woodham: (de)coding performance

DIY

Learn to build and program wearable sensors for use in sound based live art.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Beverly Thomas: The Silence

DIY

A 4 day residential workshop for artists of Colour to explore silence and revitalize their creativity.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Cade and MacAskill: The Making of Pinocchio

DIY

A playfully theatrical DIY for trans, intersex, non-binary and genderqueer artists exploring notions of realness through the desires of a wooden puppet to be “a real boy”.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Call for Participants

DIY

Applications are now open for 24 national professional development workshops by artists, for artists

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Call for Proposals

DIY

Invitation to propose unusual and exciting artists’ workshops

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Charlie Ashwell & Es Morgan: ANDROGYNY!

DIY

A weekend of dance and discussion for anyone interested in thinking about gender through dancing.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Claire MacDonald: Curse Bless me Now

DIY

Daring to curse. Blessing when the world is ending.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Daniel Oliver: Scripting Unscriptable Performance

DIY

Writing down and getting someone else to perform performances that can not or should not be written down and given to someone else to perform.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Edythe Woolley: SWEAT: the sky leaks I leak

DIY

Un-straightening, leaking and oozing towards queer entanglement, through an embodied practice of sweating.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Fox Irving & Eva Peskin: Step One! Sharing

DIY

A two-day workshop on the art of sharing in collaborative encounters for artists in the North West.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Jack Tan & Annie Jael Kwan: Potluck Stories

DIY

A weekend of intercultural grocery shopping, culinary adventures and sharing stories about ingredients, journeys, migration, nationality and material culture.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Jenny Gaskell: Have you tried screaming your heart out and pretending to be Cher?

DIY

Creating a connection practice based on karaoke and daydreaming and oversharing and shared chips

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson: To The Ritual Knowledge Of Remembering

DIY

3 day immersive workshop, exploring the body, ancestral memory and the land. To liberate creative actions towards a Decolonised Future.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Liat Rosenthal & Alex Eisenberg: Shiduchs, Shabbes and Shmucks

DIY

Exploring artist responses to Jewishness and antisemitism by spending Shabbat (the Jewish day of rest) together.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Oozing Gloop: COMMUCRACY NOW

DIY

Creating a revolutionary vanguard that will develop and present a new economy of government; COMMUCRACY.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Phoebe Patey-Ferguson & FK Alexander & Andre Neely: THE CULT

DIY

Are you feeling fed up and pissed off? Are you confused and overwhelmed? Are you isolated and unfulfilled? Are you ready to welcome ART into your life? THE CULT WELCOMES YOU.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Quiplash: Unsightly Drag

DIY

Bringing visually impaired queers and drag performers together to share skills and fuck shit up.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Stacy Makishi: Proud Mary!

DIY

What’dya get when you cross: Tina Turner, Mary Wollstonecraft and The Virgin Mary? A Proud Mary! The triple-decker-mother of workshops!

Read more

DIY: 2019 – The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein: ’Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’

DIY

Reimagining Scale, Ambition and Access for Monsters in Performance, through the lens of Feminist Sci-Fi

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Tim Jeeves & Lena Simic: The Party Calls You

DIY

Between climate breakdown, austerity and Brexit, the UK is facing its greatest political crisis in decades. What place is there for artists within the UK’s political institutions?

Read more

Also

DIY: 2017 – Marikiscrycrycry: THE T R A P LAB

DIY

A dance workshop series, curated club night, open laboratory, and curated self-care night to dance our dreams into reality

Read more

DIY: 2016 – Documentation

DIY

Selected images, video and participant feedback

Read more

Donation

£