Since the 1970s, American artist Matt Mullican‘s performances, sculptures, drawings, photographs, and videos have informed our understanding of postmodern culture. He investigates our relationship with the world of images: how we establish meaning and how symbols serve as representations of identity. Since his first performance under hypnosis at The Kitchen in 1978, he has worked with hypnosis to explore processes of personification and psychological projection. Transforming into a character he refers to as ‘That Person’, his performances appear as both feigned and genuine spiritual possessions, enacting behaviours such as singing, crying, and drawing, as if embodied by an old, unstable friend. Mullican will discuss this key aspect of his practice and its place in his overall oeuvre, which is celebrated for its blending of architectural, symbolic, and expressionist concerns. He is visiting Australia for Speech Acts, an exhibition curated by Wes Hill at UTS Gallery, Gadigal/Sydney. He lives in Berlin and New York, and works as a professor at the Hamburg Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Hamburg.