The Beast With [Two] Backs by Paul Walker and Gideon Payten-Griffiths is an evolving body of research and material with a choreographic core fused with live-art, theatre, participatory and installation elements. The work seeks to distill the physical acts of sex into performative expressions, celebrating sex as shame-free pleasure, as play and as a creative/artistic act. The work aims to probe sex-positivity, harness love and sex as radical provocations and examine the psychological journey of sex including, being watched, fear, vulnerability, desire and attainment, beauty in the grotesque, fragile, [in]finite, [non]reproductive, eco-sexual and queer body.

Varied iterations of this work have been exposed at SAMPLE performance night, Big Muscles Sad Heart's Variety Night and the School of Really Good Sex's Sydney festival and the Into the Wild retreat.

Paul and Gideon will be devising new iterations of the Beast responsive to the Art of Love festival popping up in unexpected ways in live performance, ceremony and installation and intervention. They will also be presenting their own workshops at the festival drawing on their experience as artists, performers and dancers.

Paul Walker is a Sydney based artist working within the realms of dance, performance, installation and drawing. His solo performance practice explores the body as a site for queering personal and collective stories, through symbolism and ritual. Paul has presented solo work at Queer Nu Werk (PACT), Down / Under Space, The Nest Creative Space, Intersect Art Space, STACKS PROJECTS, Tatwerk Berlin, SEAM Symposium (Critical Path), Dance Meets Music II and Day for Night for Liveworks at Performance Space.

Gideon Payten-Griffiths is an chameleonic artist, performer, curator and facilitator spanning theatre, dance, music, live-art, film, installation and bodywork, finding a centre in the body as a material and emotional landscape and in searching for the compassionate, liminal space between things. His work manifests in a range of forms, contexts and collaborations including with Sydney Festival, Sydney Biennale, Peats Ridge Festival, Next Wave, Sydney Opera House, Performance Space, MCA Australia, KW Institute Berlin, PACT, The History Council of NSW, Sydney Living Museums, Strings Attached, DeQuincey Co. and Ninefold.