The Bleeding Tree

Amanda Davies has produced a series of new work in response to Angus Cerini's play, The Bleeding Tree. The Bleeding Tree brings one of Australia's most successful and awarded plays of the decade to Hobart. Critics have hailed Angus Cerini's moprbidly hilarious fable as "powerful, visceral and deeply exhilarating theatre", "unhesitantingly recommended". Marta Dusseldorp stars as the vengeful matriach in this defiant, blackly comic tale of survival. Amanda's works can be viewed both in Bett Gallery and in the the dress circle foyer at the Theatre Royal.

"The language in Angus Cerini’s The Bleeding Tree gives a compelling shock; there is no room to look away. This Australian play urges the viewer to reflect on their relationship with suffering, violence, complicity and the overcoming power of matriarchy. Archipelago Productions invited me to respond to The Bleeding Tree, to collaborate and visually explore the play. Referring to notions of the home, smothering, sickness, comfort and concealment a recurring blanket motif appears throughout the small suite of paintings. This is a means to locate the world of the play through paint and to suggest tactile engagement with the subject. In these oil covered illusory objects there is nothing that can accurately capture the enormity of domestic violence and our community’s complicity. These paintings express pauses, quiet moments between the dramatic acts and I hope for them to sustain an echo of the play long after the audience have left the theatre. "   Amanda Davies, 2020