Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters co-founded Branch Nebula in 1998, and co-created all the company’s works to date. Their outlook as artists is fed by a ravenous appreciation of lowbrow culture; like mixed martial arts, wrestling, speedway, zine fairs, BMX and skate competitions, peep shows and shopping at the local mall. These are the aspects of cultural life they experience and share with their audience, because it’s what they know. Lee and Mirabelle’s shared aesthetic draws its dynamism from their passionate engagement with street culture – and its intelligence from a discriminating awareness of movements in the contemporary arts. They believe that refined art-making is everywhere, if you know how to look, and they champion the exquisite skills of the skater as they do the fluid movement of the contemporary dancer. They build Branch Nebula’s work with both.
Branch Nebula is one of Australia’s most adventurous performance companies working at the nexus between theatre, dance, sport & street-styles. They work with non-conventional performers to collaboratively devise work that defies categorization.Branch Nebula’s new work High Performance Packing Tape premiered at Performance Space’s Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art in October 2018 at Carriageworks. In 2016 the Helpmann Award winning Snake Sessions premiered in Nowra in regional NSW, and toured to Artlands Regional Arts Australia Conference & Festival in Dubbo. In 2017 Snake Sessions’ six city regional tour of skateparks was presented by Mandurah Performing Arts Centre; by Performance Art Development Agency in Adelaide, Whyalla & Mt Gambier; by Country Arts SA at Lighthouse Theatre in Warrnambool, and by the Bleach Festival, Gold Coast. . This year it was presented at APAM 2018 and toured to NSW regional centres Wagga Wagga and Griffith.
In 2016 Branch Nebula curated Swarm for Campbelltown Art Centre’s live art program, and developed a large-scale event Foodfight: The Battle for Food Security with artist Diego Bonetto for the Museum of Contemporary Art and Liverpool City Council. In 2015 the company premiered Artwork, commissioned by Carriageworks, working with unrehearsed non-performers who first meet the company an hour before going on stage.
Concrete And Bone Sessions was commissioned by Sydney Festival 2013, and toured to the Santiago A Mil festival in Chile in 2014. The Helpmann and Green Room Award winning Whelping Box premiered at Performance Space’s SEXES festival at Carriageworks in 2012, toured to Arts House in Melbourne in 2013, and Brisbane 2014. In 2013 Branch Nebula created s.l.o.a.p. (space left over after planning) working with local professional street-style artists, an international co-production with the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki Finland for the Urb Festival, later adapted for Freespace presented by West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong, in 2014.