Jessica Jordan-Wrench

My background is in experimental theatre and music with a DIY ethos. This has informed my work both in terms of attitude and motivation. In an age of division and distraction, I am drawn to immediacy. I want to feel something and I want you to feel something too. Inviting an active audience is at the core of my practice.

Alongside my solo work, I collaborate with Eoin Furbank under the name Dot Dash. Together we make noisy theatre, live and installation art: from 30 second punk gigs in the lift of the Turner Contemporary to large scale installations about entropy on Dreamland’s big wheel.

I was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries ‘18, exhibiting with them at the Liverpool Biennial and South London Gallery.

Education

2017        Associate Artist, Open School East

2007-08 MA Classical Acting, Central School of Speech and Drama

2001-05 Masters of Drama, University of Kent

SELECTED WORKS

you took the words right out of my mouth

An immersive video installation in a phone-booth at The Violet Hour, part of Turner Contemporaries offsite programme for their exhibition Journeys with The Waste Land. Here I cut up and re-ordered clips of phone conversations in popular films to create a new narrative that offered an imagined interiority to one of Eliot’s key female characters. Audience members listened to the sound through an altered rotary phone, placing them in an intimate conversation with a lost love/lover/life. The film went on to be selected by the BF Artist Film Festival and screened in Lancaster, at The Gregson Cinema in collaboration with GRAFT Lancaster, and SET in Dalston, London.

It was re-staged in 2023 at Meat Market, an exhibition in a disused butcher shop in Deptford, curated by Sophie Nowakowska (aka Professional Art Bullshitter).

Departures

A noisy text installation in Margate Station, based around a purpose built split-flap display, exploring the radically unstable concept of ‘now’.

Supported by Arts Council England with National Lottery funding, KCC with Arts Investment Fund and Margate Festival.

Departures went on to be exhibited at Turner Contemporary, from Nov 2021 to Feb 2022.

I told you there was something in the air

Immersive installation featuring mirror-balls, arranged in a constellation on drum stands and projected onto, alongside pre-recorded text and a musical score, underscored by static from six de-tuned radios. 1% of static on detuned tvs and radios is afterglow from the big bang. Here, I used this scientific theory as a launch pad to explore connectedness, memory and intimacy, via a road-trip to the apocalypse. Originally part of The Well at Open School East, it then went on to tour to Hantverk & Found as part of Turner Contemporaries offsite programme, with Bloomberg New Contemporaries (Liverpool Biennial and South London Gallery) and to The Spire in Brighton as part of their Festival programme.

the sacred act of remembering in real life

Text spoken through a gong via a surface speaker, so the words are submerged within rich drones. Made in response to Maria Chevska’s “Framing Vision” and performed at the Liddicoat & Goldhill project space in Margate in 2018, it was then re-staged in the Turner Contemporary in 2019 during the opening of the Turner Prize.

Dot Dash

Dot Dash is the collaboration between Eoin Furbank and I. Together we make noisy theatre, live and installation art. Work includes a 32 second punk gig in the lift of the Turner Contemporary, a skate ramp backed by movement responsive projections in a 1920s cinema, a collaboration with an astrophysicist on a show about entropy (featuring a 30m train-set) in furniture depository, a a morse code conversation using signal lamps that could be seen from 7km away, a large scale sound, light and text installation on Dreamland’s big wheel, a guided meditation (from a lion and a megaphone) on a carousel, a Karaoke session featuring Tears for Fears slowed down by 400%, a binaural audio work exploring the elasticity and relativity of time. Individually and in collaboration, our work crosses disciplines and contexts: experimental theatre, DIY music, “fine” art, in warehouses, galleries, theatres, music venues, a water tower. It is, however, held together by a common thread: an eagerness to create work that physically engages with an audience. Inviting an active audience is at the core of our practice.

For more work with Dot Dash please see here.