Rochelle Haley is an artist engaged with painting, choreography and installation to explore dynamic relationships between colour, space, light and the body. Haley is interested in painterly and choreographic modes of composition across disciplines, experimenting with abstraction and light embodying temporality within real and pictorial space. Working with dancers, Haley’s performance works discover multi modal harmonies between audiences, performers and architectures. Her paintings, installations and public artworks share a lively and feeling-ful approach to the experience of space structured around the sensation of the moving body.
Her major performance work, A Sun Dance, made its international premiere at Tate St Ives in the United Kingdom in September 2024 after being commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia for its world premiere in February 2024. Supported by a Creative Australia Major Commissioning Grant and Australian Research Council funded project Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum, A Sun Dance is an ongoing case study for new approaches to performance preservation and transmission with TATE Conservation.
Haley is a Senior Lecturer at University of New South Wales, School of Art & Design Sydney, where is gained her PhD in 2009. She is currently the Inaugural Artist in Residence at the Randwick Health and Innovation Precinct, where she has also been commissioned for several major public art lighting and mural commissions completed in 2024-25. In 2020 Rochelle was selected as an Artspace One Year Studio Artist and her major installation EVER SUN was presented by Performance Space at Carriageworks and the City Of Sydney Laneways Art program 2021. Haley’s performances have been commissioned by numerous institutions including TATE St Ives, National Gallery of Australia, Bundanon Museum, UNSW Galleries, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.