HARRIET GILLIES is an award-winning performance artist working across a range of performance modes. She has performed in immersive and interactive projects such as Pony Express’ Ecosexual Bathhouse, PVI Collective’s Blackmarket and Hermann Nitsch 150 Actions. Backstage Harriet has been a man-wrangler for Nat Randall and Anna Breckon’s the Second Woman and co-production manager and tour manager for Peaches’ There’s Only One Peach With a Hole in the Middle, which toured across Europe in 2019. 

She has completed artist residencies with Robert Wilson at the Watermill Centre and Marina Abramović at Kaldor Public Art Projects, solo residencies with La Serre: Arts Vivants in Montreal, and the Bearded Tit in Sydney. Her own performances have been presented across Australia, New Zealand and North America. Harriet was the 2019 recipient of the Glorias’ Fellowship to undertake professional development across North America and complete a mentorship with director Lynsey Peisinger.

Her solo performance, The Power of the Holy Spirit, won the Best Experimental Show Award at the Melbourne Fringe Festival and had a sell out season at the Flying Nun in Sydney. Her digital performance with collaborator Xanthe Dobbie, Pleasuredome premiered as part of 2020 Griffin Lock-In, and was presented by Griffin Theatre Company at the 2021 Sydney Festival. She currently tours Queer Powerpoint with Xanthe Dobbie and Thom Smyth as an ongoing series of niche deep-dives, presenting at Western Australian Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of Sydney Biennale, Pleasures Playhouse and 107 Projects in Sydney. 

Alongside collaborator Marcus McKenzie, Harriet presented a sold-out performance at RISING Festival of 8/8/8: WORK, an eight-hour theatre piece lampooning work life in a post-capitalist world, which is the first in a triptych of performances commissioned by RISING. She is in development to present 8/8/8: WORK, REST & PLAY in RISING 2024. 

I live and work on the unceded Aboriginal land of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people.

I would like to pay my respects to elders past, present, and future, and extend that acknowledgement and respect to all first nations people who have found their way to this site. 

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.