Magic Malfunction

Magic Malfunction is a roaming experience reflecting a coming together. Of women’s work from busy hand, of evil eyes and pointing bones, of dances mediated through pixelated slips.

Marian Abboud and Vicki Van Hout are Sydney-based artists – also known as ‘mischief makers’- whose respective practices span performance, installation, dance, and choreography. Their careers crossed paths in 2007 when they participated in a speed dating event that paired choreographers with visual artists, eventuating in their first collaborative artwork, Behind the Zig Zag.

Fifteen years later, Abboud and Van Hout have maintained their artistic partnership, exploring the intersection of their respective Lebanese and Indigenous heritages: their intercultural sisterhood. Founded through shared experiences of the diaspora and dialogues of temporality, being, belief and magic, Abboud and Van Hout’s combined practices works to transcend perceived boundaries of place, language, and identity.

In Magic Malfunction, Abboud and Van Hout grapple with consolidating fifteen years of creation, collaboration, and cultural exchange into a single moment, across the four rooms of Lewers House Gallery. Here, they navigate kinship structures, cultural connections, living in the diaspora, respect for the land, guidance from the elders and those who came before them. Here, fifteen years of collaboration is re-framed, re-presented, and re-embodied.

A collection of archival research and unfinished works traversing video, installation, and traditional forms of making are brought together to circulate themes of process, logic, discussion and research, rationalising the bizarre until it becomes a truth of sorts. Speaking to the intersection of technology, culture and identity, Magic Malfunction considers the magic – both ancient and modern – that permeates our daily lives and rituals.

Magic Malfunction invites audiences to consider the magic – ancient and modern – that permeates our daily lives and rituals.

Magic Malfuntion is supported by Penrith City Council, Penrith Performing & Visual Arts, the NSW Government through Create NSW, and TLE Electricals.