David Pledger

Dr David Pledger is a contemporary artist working within and between the performing, visual and media arts in Australia, Asia and Europe. His live performances, installations, interactive artworks, documentaries and digital art have been presented in various locations including theatres, galleries, museums, a car-park, a stables, a cattle-yard, a suburban house, a film studio and at the Australian Institute of Sport.

His work is notable for building new artworks that combine movement, image, sound and word into an organic system and for engaging publics in productive and provocative ways. From his initial practice, live performance, he has developed a cross-disciplinary dramaturgy in which a central platform is engaging with artists across art-forms and experts from social, scientific and academic fields.

He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award and the Kenneth Myer Performing Arts Medal for his work as a director and actor. His work is distinguished by collaborations with individual artists – including media artist Jeffrey Shaw, visual artists William Kelly and Callum Morton, choreographer Shimizu Shinjin and theatre director, Kim Kwang Lim – and with companies of international note, particularly from Asia. His practice interests include the body, the digital realm and public space. In 1995, he co-founded not yet it’s difficult (NYID), one of Australia’s leading interdisciplinary arts companies.

He studied politics and cinema at Monash University where he also took an MA in Asian Studies. He is an acting graduate from the National Institute of Dramatic Art and recently completed a PhD in the Spatial Information Architecture Lab, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, Melbourne. He regularly comments on matters of artistic practice, cultural policy, arts activism and the artist's relationship to society.