FOREST OF THE INSIDE
MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL 2008

Above: Greta Larkins as the Gardener

Could you explore someone's mind? Imagine taking a tour through all the various memories and fragments that make up this person. Forest of the Inside was the second event for live art group Spill Collective, spanning a week in October 2008 as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. A transformation in the mind of a fictional character called Hansel was presented through an installation incorporating sculpture, sound art, video projection, photography, visual art, text based art and live performance. 

Above: Nick Walton-Healy  as Hansel

Audiences traversed an extensive indoor maze to arrive at an outdoor performance against the backdrop of a Clifton Hill railway line. The group worked collaboratively on the overall concept for months in advance before developing an individual work in response, bringing it all together to create a dark forest of broken memories. Dealing with issues of gendered identity, Spill Collective once again ruptured the boundary between internal fantasy and exterior reality.

The following is an excerpt from Hansel's story by Allison Wiltshire: 

"He is stuck in a spiral. His identity and life continually fade back into the same result of lonliness and solitude. He creates a world within himself which he lives through. A forest which has no laws and along it are parts of himself he has ejected from within. The branches relax as he lets them go, and they shed like leaves crumbling on the forest floor.

"The forest has been growing since he was born. Fixed between the trees are ghost images, like pages torn from a picture book. Deeper in the heart of the forest they start to moove and come alive. They are peices of him; aromas, memories, parts he has let grow here in this forest which will protect and decipher him. But the forest is also deceptive, temping him with leaves like lips and vines like grasping fingers.

. . . . . . . .

"Though the echoes of the roots and the wind, he hears the sound of an axe. The trees begin to bleed around him. He musters his strength and follows the ringing axe. He finds the woodsman, and though he wants to stop him, even in his imagination he can't. He runs back into the forest, all around fall the bodies of trees. The sap from the trunks make the ground sticky and wet. Each tree was him. He runs as fast as he can, away toward the sun, The forest is no longer secure and safe, slugs and spiders emerge from the rotting leaflitter. The trees begin to moan. He must escape.

Clockwise from top: Sonja Hornung on cello, audiences in the outdoor performance,
inside the maze of sheets, Ella Roberts as the Mother with the gingerbread house

"Smoke rises in the distance. It smell of flesh and ginger. He follows it. He finds the gingerbread house, he remembers this from childhood. Suddenly he remembers running from it, barefoot as a wild animal. Flesh spewing from the chimney. The house growing like a cancerous heart. The house inside him, a cancer that is active and alive. She is still inside it, waiting for him. He cannot stop himself, he is made of the same ingredients. He must return to it, he must understand, he cannot run any longer."

 . . . . . . .

Contributing Artists: Fiona Boyd, Chloe Boreham, Travis Englefield, Alex Hamilton-Smith, Theresa Harrison, Oliver Hunter, Mitch Jones, Andre Dao, Ryan Lloyd, Ella Roberts, Christina Sheils, Ursula Spiers, Adelaide Rief, Nick Walton Healy, Allison Wiltshire.

Above: Travis Englefield's body suspension performance, Fiona Boyd with masks

For more images of Forest of the Inside, visit our Flickr
Forest of The Inside Documentary is available on DVD by contacting Spill Collective