DATE & TIME Friday 4 September, 7pm LOCATION Temperance Hall, Main Hall 199 Napier Street
South Melbourne
ACCESSIBILITY Wheelchair accessible TICKETS Pay what you can here
Temperance Hall Front Studio Resident DRM (Dr Daniel R Marks) presents a new solo work-in-progress, Tract of Decision.
1) In The Penal Colony, a sequence of decisions are made to agitate the convict gene: between the gut and the eye, penality is digested and metabolised. Ned Kelly, a black sun, and the city wall are evoked in chocolate, rubber and wax; in smears of excrement wherein new life evolves and is received and blown out by the mouth.
2) While in residence, my mother taught me how to sew a school uniform, a bagpiper lent me his suit of armour, and I found a ventriloquist doll that looks just like me.
3) Lies are told in the form of games that are left unplayed.
A solo dance performance by DRM, blacksmithing and live musical accompaniment by Sean O’Brien.
CREATED AND PERFORMED by DRM (Dr Daniel R Marks) SOUND by DRM and Sean O'Brien
Daniel R Marks is a Temperance Hall Front Studio Resident for 2026.
Temperance Hall's Front Studio Residency offers six independent artists an artist stipend and two months of exclusive, unrestricted access to the Front Studio at Temperance Hall. At the conclusion of their residencies, artists present a public showing of their work in development, and receive professional photographic documentation.
The 2026 Front Studio Residency has been supported by the Neilson Foundation, the City of Port Phillip, and private donors.
DRM (Dr Daniel R Marks) is an artist and researcher based in Naarm/Melbourne, working in an interdisciplinary choreographic practice which engages intersections of image-making histories (with attention to the iconographic image), ephemeral and extractive materialities, queer radicalism and technological power. They work in a hybrid practice centring performance documentation/documentary performance, also creating virtual and screen media, sculptural installation, wearable objects, text, and audio.
DRM holds a PhD in Art and is a lecturer at RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles in the Bachelor of Fashion (Design) program. Recent solo work has been programmed by ACMI, LGI, Temperance Hall and Liquid Architecture, and they are affiliated with research networks Performing Dress Lab, Posthuman Art Network and the Australiasian Science & Technology Studies Network.
Sean A M O'Brien is a hobby metal worker and smith, working in ferrous and non ferrous metals, he replicates historical pieces from museum examples or illustrated in historical artwork.
Image credit: Kenneth Suico
The 2026 Front Studio Residency has been supported by the Neilson Foundation, the City of Port Phillip, private donors, and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Temperance Hall
199 Napier St, South Melbourne
Victoria, Australia
03 9645 9937
Monday–Friday, 9.30am–5.30pm