We tried being reasonable. It didn't work out.

Unreasonable Adults evolved from over a decade of various individual and independent performance practices. In 2004, Jason Sweeney, as the nodal point, instigated the teaming up of various practitioners and the collective started to form its mission, fuelled by self-instigated collaborations and residencies nationally and internationally.

Unreasonable Adults, is a name that encompasses far more than artistic practice, it speaks of a desire to be sudden, difficult and lost for words in a complex, unstable and deranged contemporary world. Creating work and generating ideas for new and varied spaces this collective of artists work within an international cultural landscape and lineage of makers and thinkers. Unreasonable Adults are interested in the way audiences see artists and how artists see audiences.

Unreasonable Adults. Photo: Sam Oster

The core collective active between 2004 - 2009 were:
Caroline Daish, Kerrin Rowlands, Fiona Sprott, Jason Sweeney, Julie Vulcan.

With associates: Stephen Noonan, Ingrid Voorendt.

Gift/Back Come Out Festival 2009. Photos: Sam Oster

"The work was intriguing, visually delightful and gently subversive with its imaginative narratives of abnegation and loss.".............................

Comeout 09: artful reciprocity
Jonathan Bollen - RealTime issue #92 Aug-Sept 2009 pg. 45
http://www.realtimearts.net/article.php?id=9535

Performance Art that comes with a Gift - Shaun Ellis - The Age Sept. 27 2007

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/performance-art-that-comes-with-a-gift/2007/09/26/1190486391737.php?page=fullpage

Last to see them Alive Spill Festival, London 2007

"Softness is an admirable aspect of the artistry of Unreasonable Adults. Unlike so much that is robust and loud, performance at low-level intensities can evoke in an audience a desire to lean in, to make an approach, to attend and make contact on their own ground. Quiet suspicion and seduction by stealth drew me towards this work."

Jonathan Bollen - RealTime issue #78 April-May 2007

Gift/Back Electrofringe, Newcastle 2006

"The Unreasonable Adults’ genius is in the material they coax from their audience. As many media as they are toying with and as dispersed the crowd, the Adults still work the Electrofringe audience with a captivating mix of childishness and wryness. The submissions they elicit in the course of their play are little works of art themselves, and they are preserved on the Unreasonable Adults website: "You have to randomly include numbers one inclusive to 512 into your improvisations in no sequential order. Or sequential if you want more of a challenge." "When you say the word ‘and’ you have to physicalise a Rodin pose..." Or the items "2 x Multicoloured feather boas; Chimes; a packet of 15 whistles; four leaf clover ‘good luck’; Tetrapak purse with 25 cents and old celery; a piece of coral from Daydream Island."

Dan MacKinlay - RealTime issue #76 Dec-Jan 2006 pg. 25

"The ‘live’ here was strictly ‘alive’, wrapping up with welcome low-tech absurdity from Unreasonable Adults’ The End of Romance. Their deadpan mock competitiveness in obsessively detailed descriptions of technical apparatus (various redundant laptops and a mini-cassette recorder) was a refreshing reminder that the technological is most productively linked to the social context of its use, and there’s no reason to take it all so seriously."

Out-of-body performance: e-performance and Plug-ins. A Mediatised Performance Conference. Coordinated by Yuji Sone. School of Media, Film and Theatre, University of New South Wales, Dec 1-2, 2005

David Williams - RealTime issue #71 Feb-March 2006 pg. 35

End of Romance Theatreworks Melbourne, 2005

"...the blood flow is slow and painful from a couple of wounded hearts drunk in the kitchen at a party now trapped in time."

The Rouge Room: Unreasonable Adults, The End of Romance, performers Jason Sweeney, Julie Vulcan, outside eye/collaborator Ingrid Voorendt, remote artists Caroline Daish, Jaye Hayes, Stephen Noonan and Kerrin Rowlands.

Tony Reck - RealTime issue #69 Oct-Nov 2005 pg. 35
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue69/7844