all about Lull

the SHORT story

Lull makes work across text, video, sound, music, installation and performance. She grew up in Australia playing the cello, and dancing with a touring vaudeville act. Lull’s videos, performances, and texts have been presented at sites such as the Sydney Opera House, Sydney and Melbourne Writers' Festivals, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Akademie der Künste Berlin, New York University, CPR (UK) and Babylon Cinema Berlin, and supported by the Literature, New Media, Theatre and Music Boards of the Australia Council for the Arts. As an actress she has appeared for Ensemble Theatre, Stables Theatre, Darlinghurst Theatre, La Pocha Nostra [Mexico/USA] and in Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke. Her poetry collection, Fat Bad Plan, was published in 2002, and on lyrical novel VTV was sponsored by the Australian Society of Authors. Lull's solo cabaret Lapdog is currently being translated for German audiences; this will be her fourth acclaimed solo show. She lives between Sydney and Berlin, and is prepared to go anywhere.

the LONG story

Elena Knox [Lull] began her performance career as a ’cellist with the SBS Television Youth Orchestra, Sydney Youth Orchestra and the Sydney Conservatorium ’Cello Ensemble, and as a dancer with vaudeville troupe The Maizels. A founding member [1993-1998] of Sydney music collective CODA, Elena played The Big Day Out, The Basement, Harbourside Brasserie, Recovery TV and MTV. She has recorded with CODA on two albums, and written and performed string tracks for bands including Leonardo’s Bride, Antenna [Melbourne Cricket Ground], Big Heavy Stuff, Died Pretty, Southend, The Apartments, Bluebottle Kiss and The Welcome Mat. On ’cello she has composed, improvised and performed soundtracks for Sydney Theatre Company [Pentecost and Blueprint Program], Bangarra Dance Theatre [Corroboree, Walkabout and Boomerang], and Australian Fashion Week [2004].

Elena has acted professionally for Ensemble Theatre, La Pocha Nostra, AFTRS and as main cast in Jane Campion's HOLY SMOKE, with which she attended the Venice Film Festival. Graduating with a Diploma in Dance/Drama from the University of NSW in 1994, Elena created performance persona Lull, blending performance, music and new media and presenting repertoire at the Old Darlington School, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music [Makama series] and many other clubs, pubs and venues in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1997 the Sydney Spring Festival of New Music commissioned two solo performance artworks for its closing gala, held at the Eugene Goosens Auditorium, ABC Sydney; these were televised on the ABC’s Express. Since then Lull’s performances/digital installations include This Will Only Take a Minute at Phatspace, wet at Cockatoo Island Festival New Media Gallery, and exhibits at Space3 Gallery, TAP Gallery, Medium Rare Gallery and Carriageworks [Underbelly].

In 2001 Lull wrote and performed a solo show lull at SBW Stables Theatre, and her second solo cabaret dis Miss! was showcased at the Sydney Opera House Studio in 2003. She presented three solo performances by invitation at New York University for Women and Theatre Program 2003, ‘Identities on Trial’. In 2003 she also attended a masterclass ‘radical approaches to collaborative artmaking’ with Guillermo Gomez-Peña at the Centre for Performance Research, Wales, with funding from the Theatre and New Media Arts Boards of the Australia Council for the Arts. She has subsequently performed with Gomez-Peña’s international company La Pocha Nostra in the UK and Australia, and returned to the University of Wales to present work at the Magdalena Project conference 2005, funded by the Ian Potter Foundation. Lull created performances and videos for Music for the Eyes, tributes to composer Erik Satie and artist Norman Lindsay, with CODA at the Sydney Opera House in 2005 and 2006, and subsequently undertook an artist’s residency with CODA at Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon Artist Centre.

Lull has appeared as vocalist, lyricist and performance artist at the Sydney Opera House Studio, Performance Space [Living Museum of Fetishized Identities], Darlinghurst Theatre, Side-On Café, Basement, Bar Me, Dendy, Club 34B, Club Kooky, Spectrum, Gurlesque, Newtown Theatre, The Annandale Hotel, Tilbury Hotel, Hopetoun Hotel, Glenworth Valley Music Festival, Woodford Folk Festival and The Great Escape. In 2007 with five other performers she formed 6 Quick Chicks, a comedy burlesque series which has enjoyed five successful seasons and continues in 2008. As half of Lull and Nancy [myspace.com/lullandnancy], Lull has curated and produced sell-out performance parties The Skool Fete and The Hair Do, and co-directed, co-produced and starred in the short film Fantasia of a Common Gull, which in 2010 played as part of the Sydney Mardi Gras parade.

As a writer, Elena has received an Australia Council for the Arts grant for Literature, a Varuna Mentorship for poetry, dramaturgical grants from Playworks, emerging artist project development support from the Myer Foundation and bUzz [Australia Council Music Board], and numerous travel grants. Her poetry chapbook, FAT BAD PLAN, is published by Vagabond Press. Her poetry has been projected onto the AMP building at Circular Quay [October 2007, Art and About, City of Sydney], broadcast on FBI, 2SER and Eastside Radio, illustrated for the Red Room nationwide Toilet Doors Poem Posters project, projected at The Salon [Knot Gallery] and published in Cordite, Divan, Slope [ozErotica], Southerly, Sport [NZ], LINQ, Hecate, The Material Poem, A Slice of Cherry Pie [USA], Going Down Swinging, Shampoo, Famous Reporter and SideWaLK. Her theatrical writing has won awards in the ICI Young Playwright of the Year and the Ian Reed Prize for Radio Drama. She recently received a prestigious Australian Society of Authors mentorship for her novel, undertaken with Steve Tomasula in Chicago, USA. Elena read her poetry at the Bangarra Theatre as part of the Sydney Writers Festival 2007. Also in 2007 she attended a development laboratory for interactive narrative, LAMP, on Queensland’s Stradbroke Island, sponsored by the Literature Board and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She is currently working on online imagetext gallery trope [in SecondLif]e with academic Cristyn Davies and media artist Sarah Waterson on a Write In Your Face grant, and represented in exhibition Drawing Stories, Playing with Poems in the foyer of the Australia Council for the Arts. A chapter co-written with Davies recently appeared in Artistic Bedfellows [ed. Holly Crawford, University Press of America].

Elena holds a Certificate IV in Audio Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts [Performance Studies] with first class Honours.

That's just some of it. It's a beast of a bio to keep up to date. More information on the evolving definitions of Lull and Elena Knox can be found on the NEWS page of this website. In particular, check out Lull's new band!