An exhibition of live performance and installation exploring healing through the body and costume.

HOSSEI’s performances, installations and sculptural works combine his experiences as an educator and carer, with an abiding interest in costume, spectacle, ritual and choral performance. HOSSEI repurposes industrial and household items, building and hardware supplies, deadstock textiles, and other readily available materials as wearable costumes and accessories.

Working collaboratively with seamstresses, HOSSEI embues his costumes with 'talismanic' properties; singing into bags so that the wearer can carry music with them, or placing lucky charms or blessings in the stitches of clothing to underscore their reparative potential. Through live performance, sculpture and installation HOSSEI explores the extraordinary potential of everyday things to act as vessels for joy and healing. Acting as both exaggerations and extensions of the body, HOSSEI’s costumes are animated through euphoric live performances. As fantastical sculptures, his costumes live on through riotous installations that affirm the potential of the spirit and endow everyday things with a new materiality and purpose. The exhibition's title, O, is at once a mouth shape, a body held, and a portal to the otherwordly.

Conceived as an extended catalogue of his practice, ho55ei ~ BLESSSENSE bags and accessories will be exclusively available for purchase in the gallery during the exhibition. O follows an extended period of material research, collaborative experimentation and play, developed through HOSSEI's 2022-23 UTS Artist in Residence program.

The UTS Artist in Residence program is generously supported by the UTS Faculty of Engineering and IT, the Faculty of Design, Architecture and the Built Environment and is administered by UTS Gallery & Art Collection. Hossei's live performances are supported by City of Sydney.