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Parole of an Apparition

with Nigel Rolfe

8 – 14 October 2025, Vienna

From 8 – 14 October 2025, British-Irish performance artist Nigel Rolfe and Irish visual artist Paula Fitzsimons will join forces with local Vienna-based artists for a series of live performances and installations in Vienna. The event will take place at different sites and locations in the city, including Schloss Neugebäude, Votivkirche, and Haus der Industrie.

Nigel Rolfe (UK/IE) is considered one of the pioneering artists of performance art and has been one of its most active and prominent practitioners since the 1970s. From his early works, which he described as “Sculptures in Motion,” to politically engaged performances in the 1980s, movements into photography, drawing, video and sound, as well as recent outdoor performances, he has profoundly shaped the history of performance art. His work has been exhibited in museums, biennials, and retrospectives around the world. Grounded in the belief that all art-making is a live and vital engagement, Rolfe’s performances involve interactions with raw materials, natural elements such as water, fire, air, and earth, as well as environments, in what he calls “works made live”.

Paula Fitzsimons is an Irish visual artist using modes of live performance art, photography, moving image, sound, text and expanded drawing technique to make time-based works of art. She works with ephemeral, natural and found materials. Her art practice is informed by movements such as Fluxus, Gutai and Arte Povera, in a world of things, to convene and orchestrate a weave of material crisis as an art practice without edges.

Parole of an Apparition features works by Michele Bernabei, Robert di Pauli Gruber, Imants Daksis, Kevin Daryl Ferdinandus, Paula Fitzsimons, Peter Fritzenwallner, Laura Hatting, Anna Hofbauer, Mersedes Margoit, Markus Redl, Lissie Rettenwander, Nigel Rolfe, and Céline Struger. The programme will also include an artist talk with Andreas Spiegl from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.