"I am looking to the way the piece itself exists in this leaky container. How does the work reveal, revere, and disrupt the logic of the gallery? When does the energetic kinetic fissure of liveness in the gallery break through, or spill over, into meaningful, bodily material meaning-making?"
– Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris. Memo Review. 2023
"Lasica’s compelling performance-exhibition is crafted in such a way that it is as much about being missed as it is about being seen and the following text attempts to operate in response to its layers of visibility and illegibility".
– Lizzie Thomson. Performance Review. 2023
“WHEN I AM NOT THERE is a major new work that sees the performers and objects on display in constant negotiation with each other, the space, and visitors – the choreography sets everything in flux.”
– Australian Arts Review. 2023
"There was no documentation, instead the works that occupied the space were inseparable from the action taking place. The audience was given the autonomy to roam about and experience the exhibition as they pleased. WHEN I AM NOT THERE proposed an exciting, alternative model of curating and exhibiting performance".
– Anador Walsh. Performance Review. 2023
"WHEN I AM NOT THERE by Shelley Lasica – a work created over three years, deriving from ideas and experiments from Lasica’s archives over the past four decades. This piece explores notions and discussions around choreography in the gallery space and what it means ‘to perform’ and ‘to exhibit’."
– Renata Ogayar. Dance Informa. 2023
"Rethinking performance, exhibition and documentation through dance From dance experimentations in the 70s to more recent performance-exhibitions, what does it mean to look at dance in a visual art context?"
– Celina Lei. ArtsHub. 2023
"The survey of Shelley Lasica’s choreography at the Monash University Museum of Art represents a radical departure from convention"
– Anador Walsh. The Saturday Paper. 2022
"Lasica talks about her unusual dance background, the influence of her mother and other artists, her experience of performance and the importance of standing her ground as a young female practitioner, taking authority and reversing the gaze."
–Tamsen Hopkinson. un Projects. 2018
"...‘revealing the truth’ in dance and how creating complexity and a kind of ‘unhooked narrative’ that is not linear or logocentric might be a more exciting way of looking at things."
–Tai Snaith. A World of Her Own for ACCA. 2018
"While Lasica dances, we are at liberty to do as we wish but always with an awareness that we are part of the situation also, and that our agency, attention and experience are not a pre-determined quantity that the work will drive through regardless. There is a palpable experience of being a part of a choreography in the here and now, an unrepeatable composition that occurs between whoever and whatever is in the space."
–Erin Branningan. Performance Paradigm Vol 13. 2017
"Because although the doing is not always witnessed, it is always happening. This situation is of course not exclusive to dance choreography."
–Shelley Lasica. Performance Paradigm Vol 13. 2017
“For spectators at Solos For Other People, there is no single point of view or perspective on the work…”
–Philipa Hawker. Sydney Morning Herald. March 12 2015
“Engaged in their own separate tasks, the dancers create little worlds around themselves…Small groups begin to emerge, couples whose relationship is proximal, or symmetrical.”
–Chloe Smethurst. The Sydney Morning Herald. March 15 2015
“And what if the performance was itself an experiment with the problem of performing the same thing, again?…expanding the sense of the different differences between performances as self-similarity under variant conditions.”
–Justin Clemens. VIANNE VIANNE. 2012
“Curiosity makes the dance fit the audience in the room.”
–Philippa Hawker. The Age. November 23 2011
“Lasica has left a lot unsaid and in doing so, given space to the observer to meet action.”
–Philipa Rothfield. Real time Feb-Mar Issue. 2010
“Lasica explores themes of order, randomness and control in our lives.”
–Jordan Beth Vincent. The Age. December 12 2009
“Shelley Lasica’s Vianne institutes many kinds of framing.”
–Philipa Rothfield. Real Time Feb-Mar Issue. 2009.