BonkersFest - Open Green & Offsite - Artists Biogs

Abalino Dance Theatre
Abalino Dance Theatre is an innovative and experimental young company that combine the dance and lage-scale puppetry. The performer is part dancer, part puppeteer and part puppet. Exciting and accessible visual theatre! Company members - Alice Cade, Katie Green, Jasmiina Sipila, Sara Lindstrom http://www.myspace.com/abalino
T Wildhunt Bedlam Morris Dancers
The Wild Hunt Bedlam Morris blend ancient North European Mythology and English Border Morris dance. We aim to capture some of the original mystique and magic of our past for our audience. We hope you enjoy the spectacle and the robust English music that accompanies it. The team was formed in September 1991, meeting (appropriately) in the shadow of a hill known as Bedlams Bank at Merstham, Surrey.
We are a mixed team of dancers and musicians. New dancers and musicians - experienced or beginners - are always welcome. We meet in Croydon at 8pm on Tuesday evenings. Please call or e-mail for details. www.wildhunt.org.uk
Bobby Baker
Bobby Baker will be performing Pull Yourself Together at the second Bonkersfest!, Creative Routes’ annual one day arts festival celebrating madness, creativity and individuality. First commissioned by Small Acts at the Millenium, Pull Yourself Together toured the streets of Central London on 20th April 2000. Strapped to the back of a truck, Bobby Baker, complete with megaphone, will reimbark on her mental health crusade. As part of Bonkersfest on 2nd June, touring the streets of Camberwell, Bobby will command the world to pull itself together.
Bobby Baker is a Performance artist principally concerned with an exploration of aspects of daily life and human behaviour.
Bobby trained as a painter but soon found it hard to express her ideas in paint alone and turned instead to sugar and cake as more expressive media. She found that the best way of presenting these edible works of art to the public was through performance. Celebrating Daily Life, she's danced with meringue ladies, recreated the history of modern painting in food, drawn on her experience as a mother and shopped herself into a state of beatitude.
Bureau of silly ideas
The Bureau of Silly ideas is an eclectic collective of creative practitioners. Founded in 2002, BOSi’s key aim is producing shit hot shows through productions that explore and combine circus, spectacle, gallery and street theatre.
BOSi present THE MACHINES (Walkabout) at Bonkersfest 2007, presenting part of their ever growing menagerie of radio controlled two way talking everyday and season objects. www.bosi.org.uk
Hannah Chamberlain
Hannah Chamberlain is a Devon girl, Oxford graduate and service user. She loves writing and listening to stories. As a filmmaker her credits include Channel 4, Channel 5, The Community Channel, Mental Health Media and Mental Health Foundation. Her short films have screened at film festivals worldwide: Cannes, Raindance, BBC Shorts and the Australia Film Festival.
Insect Circus
Ladies& Gentlemen! Boys& Girls! Stroll Up! Stroll up for the Magnificent Insect Circus Museum!” Housed in a vintage, mahogany lined, Bedford TK beetlebox lorry, this unique museum displays a stunning array of costumes, props, puppets, toys and ephemera from the extraordinary collection of the Insect Circus Society. Spanning more than three centuries, and covering many continents, this is undeniably the finest museum of its kind in the world. www.insectcircus.co.uk
Kim Noble
Kim Noble (of Noble and Silver) has worked Maudsley patients to create an audio visual tour of the Maudsley Hospital. On the day of BonkersFest! the public will be invited to use the video tour guides for the price of 1pence. This of course reflects back to the Victorian times when 'normal's' would spend 1pence to witness the 'mad' at Bedlam, for entertainment.
Laundrettas
Ahhh, the Laundrettas - the most fabulous flock of Ladies you'll ever meet. Their mission? To bring a little more love and light into this depressed and cynical civilisation in which many do dwell. Over the past 3 years they have entertained the masses in the street, on the tube, at the cabaret - especially the infamous Lost Vagueness, and wherever they go. Collectively, they are women who are not afraid to be themselves, know how to make others feel welcome and put on sublime soirees. The Ladies may wash your socks, give you a marvellous makeover, or sing you a song...it's an interactive playground for those who wish to make the most of life too. www.myspace.com/laundrettas
London School of Samba
Formed by a nucleus of 12 musicians in January 1984, the London School of Samba was the first Samba School in the UK. Since they began drum & dance workshops in April 1984, they have taught and introduced Samba to thousands of people throughout the UK and Europe, many of whom were later inspired to form their own Samba groups. London School of Samba have been working with Creative Routes members leading up to the festival and will perform together at Bonkersfest 2007!
www.londonschoolofsamba.co.uk
Rakshanda Khan and Sophia Yadong Hao
Spin Cycle is an interactive one-day live artwork and installation at a launderette close to Camberwell Green that will take place during the festival. Spin Cycle explores obsessive or addictive forms of self-expression that offer albeit temporary relief from stressful experiences and painful memories. Khan and Hao will perform a repetitious ritual of washing hands which refers to the phrase “to wash one’s hands of” as a metaphor for a cathartic process of erasing painful memories. In Spin Cycle, the audience is invited to participate in a ritual of cleansing and washing away. Sophia Yadong Hao is a live artist based in Manchester. Her work attempts to break down boundaries in personal space through interaction and improvisation. Rakshanda Khan is a graphic designer based in London currently working on a graphic novel about Self Injury aimed at the mental health sector. Spin Cycle will take place in the Tumblewash Laundrette on Camberwell Church
Street. SLG
Lucy Panesar
For Bonkersfest! 07, artist Lucy Panesar has developed a live artwork disguised as a market research exercise. Good Vibrations will invite the public to test the marketability of the vibrator as an electro-therapeutic device for treating hysteria and other female stress related disorders. The device is presented as a faux therapeutic treatment from NFHC International Inc, the fictional faceless corporation created by Panesar. For the past year, Panesar has been researching, developing and presenting live artworks in response to the current national interest in improving mental well-being, therapy culture, the self-help industry and the transformation economy. Early outcomes include The Smile Test and Fill my shelves, Transform my life which were both performed in the Camberwell area, responding to Southwark’s history of being a ‘City of Transformations’. SLG
Orly Orbach
Artist and workshop facilitator Orly Orbach has developed a series of new drawings for Bonkersfest! 07 that convey ideas and experiences of madness. This series of drawings will be inserted into newsagent advertising panels around Camberwell Green. In addition, Orbach will lead a participatory drawing workshop on the Green during the day.
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2003, Orbach has worked on personal, collaborative and research-based projects. In 2006, Orbach was awarded the Association of Illustrators Gold Award in Design for her project Burnt Book Box, an arts and health commission about smoking. Recently, she has also realised drawing projects with the Welcome Trust and the Hayward Gallery. SLG
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