Robert Prideaux Portfolio
I.
Artistic Work
II.
Curation / Organisational Work
III.
Light Design
IV. Teaching
I. Artistic Work (selected)
Independent artistic projects, installations and performances
My solo work moves between installation, performance, and scenographic intervention. I build spatial environments in which text, sound, and audience come together to explore environmental crisis, historical memory, and the tension between human systems and ecological change. Below is a selection of four works from my independent artistic practice.
Shipwreck
– solo artisic work
Robert Prideaux
(reading performance, with spacial sound and light installation)
Troubling Time – s-l-i-c-e, Wiesenburg, Berlin, 2022
3.17 min extract from 23 min performance.
Shipwrecks is a performance-installation combining reading, light, and sound. An emergency lighting system and tannoy installed throughout the gallery and its overgrown garden transform the site into a performative environment. When the work begins, the audience hears the emergency announcements across the space and must move through it to find the performer. The live reading begins with the actual emergency messages once delivered on a Mediterranean cruise ship in distress, before unfolding into the story of a pianist on board. The pianist’s story is intertwined with a poetic meditation on shipwrecks across history. Installation, performance, and text come together to explore human greed, disaster, and nature’s slow reclamation of sites of destruction.
Worlds End
– solo artisic work
Robert Prideaux
(Interactive performance / Pub Quiz and sceneographic installation)
FAQ – Uferhallen, Berlin 2023
Worlds End was an interactive performance-installation created for a group exhibition. I built and ran a functioning bar beneath a large painted pub sign showing an apocalyptic landscape. At the opening, the bar became the site of a live pub quiz, with rounds focused on environmental destruction, the collapse of civilisations, and the consequences of human greed. By combining set, painting, performance, audience participation, and the social rituals of drinking, the work staged a deliberately uneasy contrast between convivial entertainment and the subject of societal and ecological collapse. Through this tension, the piece reflected on the collective short-term thinking, denial, and attachment to comfort through which societies continue to participate in their own destruction. The winning team received a painting echoing the imagery of the pub sign, while the completed answer sheets from each team remained on display on the bar for the rest of the exhibition.
One year later
Cruiseship waterslide
– solo artisic work
Robert Prideaux
OUT NOW – Uferhallen, Berlin, 2021
Grass Harp 004 – ExRotaprint, Berlin, 2023
(Interactive installation in bird boxes & reading)
Cruiseship Waterslide is an installation combining sculpture, video, and collage. Visitors climbed a ladder to look through the entrance hole of a bird box, where a circular video showed people descending waterslides on cruise ships. Nearby, a collage in the style of a nature information board presented surreal images of cruise ships moving through jungle waterfalls and rapids, overlaid with graffiti showing a waterslide design and a map linking bird migration routes between Europe and Africa, with cruise ship routes across the same regions. The work explores cruise tourism, pollution, and Europe’s exploitative relationship to Africa, while also making a small material contribution to the site by leaving the bird box in place afterwards for birds to use.
In a later iteration, the installation was activated by a short live reading describing a man stranded on a marooned cruise ship in the jungle, watching migratory birds about to fly back towards Europe, before the audience was led into an overgrown courtyard to encounter the work.
Bow Creek
– solo artisic work
Robert Prideaux
(epic poem reading performance)
Manifest – Uferhallen, Berlin, 2020
Bow Creek is a 45-minute reading performance of an epic poem focused on a single river bend in London across millions of years. Performed during the Covid-19 pandemic from a small high window and delivered through a megaphone, the work draws on the visual and acoustic language of protest, warning, and public address. Moving between geological time, natural history, human civilisation, literary fiction, and speculative future, the text works mostly at a panoramic historical scale, occasionally narrowing to fleeting individual human or animal lives. The language moves between lecture and rhythmic poetry to explore disease, nature, memory, and the patterns that recur across vast stretches of time. A large banner beside the performance shows a grainy, abstracted photograph of the site, extending the work’s visual presence into the outdoor setting.
II. Curation / Organisational
Work (selected)
Co-founder, curator and producer of s-l-i-c-e, an exhibition and performance initiative, Berlin, 2020–2023
From 2020 to 2023, I jointly ran s-l-i-c-e, an artist-led curatorial initiative in Berlin, first with Rory Biddulph and later with Sheena Leach. Together we produced exhibitions and events by securing spaces, developing curatorial concepts, inviting artists, coordinating the delivery and technical requirements of their work, producing publicity, and running the events themselves. Below is a selection of three exhibitions in which performance formed part of the programme.
Troubling Time
Role — joint curation, production, technical coordination, promotion, and performance
s-l-i-c-e
Wiesenburg, Berlin, Germany, 2022
Troubling Time was a group exhibition of sculpture, video, audio, and 2D work, with performances on the opening night. Bringing together eight interdisciplinary artists based in Germany, Italy, and the UK, it explored language and temporality in relation to difficult times, with works engaging the boundaries between nature and culture, matter and meaning. My role included securing and renting the space, co-curating the exhibition, selecting artists, coordinating technical hire and installation, contributing to the exhibition text and promotion, organising hospitality, and presenting my own performance within the opening programme.
Participating artists (including my own work):
Iro Costello
Diane Edwards
Catherine Rose Evans
Caterina Gobbi
Natalia Janula
Sheena Leach
Robert Prideaux
Sam Williams
Dancing with the Archive
Role — joint organisation, facilitation, technical coordination, promotion, and light design
s-l-i-c-e
Uferstudios, Berlin, Germany, 2022
Dancing with the Archive, guest curated by Nora Heidorn, centred on Onyeka Igwe’s video installation Specialised Technique and a live performance by Djibril Sall in response to the work. My role included jointly organising and facilitating the exhibition, coordinating the technical setup, publicising the event, securing the space, and creating a small lighting design for the performance.
Structural Weakness
Role — joint organisation, facilitation, and promotion
s-l-i-c-e
Uferstudios, Berlin, Germany, 2020
Structural Weakness was a live online exhibition event developed during the Covid-19 pandemic in response to conditions of restriction. The work brought together Lea Collet in her shared flat in London and Hanna Kritten performing live in Berlin through a Zoom-based piece in which Collet created and edited live video art in real time while instructing Kritten’s performance. The event was broadcast live to the audience on YouTube. My role included jointly organising, facilitating, and promoting the event.
III. Light Design work (selected)
HZT & HFS MA Graduation projects and other selected contemporary dance and performance projects
My light design practice has developed primarily through contemporary dance and performance, where collaboration has taught me to think closely about how my role supports the wider work. I am drawn to slow atmospheric changes that are often felt more than seen, while remaining attentive to the moments when light can take on a stronger presence. I value adapting my ideas to the specific language of each piece and finding ways for light to support both the performers’ presence and the overall world of the work. Below is a selection of recent lighting designs
photos: Mayra Wallraff
To Critter – Angélica Roa
Role —Light Design
MA Solo/Dance Authorship – HZT, Uferstudios, Berlin, 2025
To Critter is a performance in which light plays both a scenographic and sensory role. I joined the process earlier than usual, allowing parts of the choreography to develop in response to shadow. I created a sculptural sun that both represented the sun within the piece and lit different areas of the stage by bringing different parts of it into brightness. In one scene, after the audience was invited to close their eyes and imagine the sun, light directed onto their faces created a sun-like sensation through their eyelids. The work concluded with UV light revealing painted elements in the set and on the performer’s body, with the fluorescent colours developed collaboratively as part of the overall visual design.
Working Title – Jemima Rose Dean
Role —Light Design & LED box
MA Solo/Dance Authorship – HZT, Uferstudios, Berlin, 2025
Working Title is a performance in which pole dancing played a central role. As part of the lighting design, I built a small underfloor lighting structure for the base of the pole, using LED elements that I assembled myself and learned to programme especially for this piece. This allowed me to shift its colour and brightness from the lighting desk, so that it functioned both as a practical light source alongside the regular stage lights and as a scenographic element within the work.
Photos: Alicja Hoppel & Valentin Braun
photos: Mayra Wallraff
Headline – Leon Locher
Role —Light Design
MA Solo/Dance Authorship – HZT, Uferstudios, Berlin, 2025
photos: Mayra Wallraff
Headline is a performance for which I created a lighting design that, in part, drew on the visual language of a television studio.
photos: Mayra Wallraff
photos: Mayra Wallraff
Saving Flowers – Pooyesh Frozandeh
Role —Light Design
MA Choreographie HfS – Ernst Busch, Berlin 2025
Tanztage – Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2026
Saving Flowers involved developing a lighting design that could both illuminate and work in dialogue with a large paper set structure.
XÊR –
Elvan Tekin
Role —Light Design
MA Choreographie HfS – Uferstudios, Berlin, 2024
Hundertpro festival – Mülheim an der Ruhr, 2025
XÊR was performed with the audience on all four sides. I used circulating lighting effects so that each side of the audience could, in turn, experience the atmosphere of backlight.
One Strike Salvation –
Yotem Peled
/ Nitzan Moshe
Role —
Light Design & LED sign
Lofft, Das Theater, Leipzig, 2025
Fabrik Potsdam, Potsdam, 2026
Dock 11, Berlin, 2026
One Strike Salvation is a performance for which I created an LED sign in the style of a traditional neon shop sign, built around the title words of the piece. Expanding on techniques I had recently taught myself, I cut and fixed the LED strips into place and re-soldered the electrical connections myself. I was then able to control the sign from the lighting desk, switching individual letters on and off and running effects through them during the piece.
Photos: Pablo Hassmann
A.Part festival & ADA Studio
Role —
Light Design
Ada Studios, Berlin 2021-2025
(all the light design for ADA studio in this time)
At A.PART Festival and ADA Studio, I developed lighting designs for newly graduated and early-career artists working with very limited time and a basic house rig. Often there was only a single day, or in festival contexts just one to two hours per group, to develop the design, programme it, and rehearse before the public showing. This taught me to work efficiently, stay organised, and quickly identify what was most needed, while also offering a calm and reassuring presence to less experienced performers.
IV. Teaching work
lighting design workshop HZT
Raum Labor (BA & MA)
Role — Lighting Teaching / Workshop Facilitation
HZT, Berlin 2025
(One month stage, sound, costume and lighting design workshop)
Raum Labor was a one-month teaching module within the HZT Berlin programme, primarily for BA students in dance, performance, and choreography, with occasional participation from MA students. Students were introduced to practical stage elements including sound, costume, set design, and lighting. Following the workshop phase, they developed their own experiments through short daily showings that gradually increased in length and complexity. My role was to guide students as they explored lighting within these emerging works, supporting both individual research and interdisciplinary collaboration.