LADA Screens: Katherine Araniello, a celebration – ONLINE SCREENING

Katherine Araniello – Greatest Hits
Watch here > Online 17 April – 28 May 2019

We are screening a compilation of work by Katherine Araniello, who died in February 2019. The compilation was edited by Oriana Fox.

Katherine was an extraordinary human being, a beloved friend of LADA, a long-standing LADA Board member, a fearless activist, and an artist who was central to so many of our publications, projects, events and professional developments programmes over many years. We will be bereft without her. As Katherine’s fellow LADA Board member Dominic Johnson said on hearing of her passing, “Live Art feels that bit less interesting and wild without her.”

Biography

Katherine Araniello was a London-based performance artist, who uses performance, video and subversive humour in response to the mundane, social awkwardness and the negative representation of disability. She twisted taboos and the everyday into works which were never quite as they seem and were constantly challenging notions of ability. No-one was exempt and everyone was under scrutiny. Araniello used improvisation, interaction and the use of technology to create unpredictable scenarios that ranged from large scale productions to DIY and workshop activities. She worked with artists including Teresa Albor, Kim Noble, Ursula Martinez, Daniel Oliver, Aaron Williamson and Marcia Farquhar; and organisations including Live Art Development Agency, Southbank Centre, Battersea Arts Centre, The Yard Theatre, China Plate, Tempting Failure, The Wellcome Trust and Guest Projects. Her recent collaborative work used fun aesthetics which create quick unplanned performances.

Araniello also worked under a number of guises, including as SickBitchCrips (SBC), a persona that allowed her to present disability in outrageous and politically incorrect ways, provoking audiences to reassess their own notions of disability in contemporary society. She also worked with Aaron Williamson as The Disabled Avant-Garde (DAG), a satirical arts organisation, creating pitch-black and self-knowing performances, videos and interventions.

Her work has been shown internationally at galleries and festivals including; Tate Modern, Tate Britain, The Nunnery, the Canadian Arts and Disability Festival, ICA, Purcell Room at Southbank Centre, Hitparaden – an international festival for performance at the Pumpehuset in Copenhagen and at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA), Michigan.

Katherine Araniello was an Artsadmin Associate Artist and is on the board of the Live Art Development Agency. She held a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art from London Guildhall University and a Master’s Degree in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London.