BREATHING : 2006
One to one performance, Colchester Arts Centre
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clik here to read review
This performance was created at the end of a Franko B winter school held at firstsite and was staged as part of the linked platform event in Colchester Arts Centre. Building on previous work that centred on breathing I aimed to create an intimate shared experience between performer and audience member. Also important was the element of control over the audience during their participation in the work. The act of breathing is not an unconscious action to everyone. For some, it can be a laboured experience whilst for others there is a joyous feeling to breath in fresh air. It is rare, unless we are required to ‘educate’ our breathing for some reason, to consciously change our breathing patterns and yet without control over this most fundamental of actions our very existence is in jeopardy.
A white tent-like structure is placed on the floor and the audience are invited one at a time to lie on the floor, at right angles to the tent and with their heads inside and under the cloth sides. Once inside, they are asked to ‘breath with me’ and are taken on an intimate journey through parallel partnered actions, riding the pace of the work from diminuendo to crescendo.
BREATH DRAWINGS : 2006
Performance and documentary video
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In my quest to work with a material as visually elusive as breath, I attempted to draw with my breath and to make visual the action of breathing. These abortive attempts were performed and documented on video. They form an ongoing growing collection of breath drawing actions.
The breath drawing film was shown at Dark and Daring ii, film festival in St Mary on the Quay Church, Ipswich in 2006.
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS : 2005-6
Performance at home, London
Commissioned by Laura Godfrey Isaacs, curator of home, London, this work explores relationship and exchange in conversation. The one to one piece is presented in three stages, an audio work in which the artist has a one-sided conversation with the audience ‘talking’ them up to the place where she waits to engage with them on a face to face basis. Once they meet, a further exchange occurs followed by the moment recorded in an intimate way before the audience member leaves the artist and returns to view a short silent DVD.
During the work the artist consciously subverts the expected experience of a conversation - removing a sense or the right to reply, changing visual references or replaying scenarios back to the audience. This is an intense experience, at times moving and emotional, sometimes infuriating, occasionally confusing.
In 2006 the piece was performed over two days as part of the InBetween Time Festival at Arnolfini, Bristol.
photography : Manuel Vason
Click here to read review
VOICE HUMAN ACTION : 2005
Made in collaboration with composer Andrew Lovett
Documentation of performance, DVD 20 minutes
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Body resonance is one element in the production of human sound. Voice Human Action was conceived by the artist in collaboration with composer Andrew Lovett and brings together the visual and audible into one work. The magnificent architecture of the Lady Chapel, Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire – the setting for the premiere of the work - has astounding acoustic qualities that subvert the expected aural experience. Performers, in their roles as actionists or singers, moved under the magnificent fan vaulted ceiling creating shapes and visual drawings that resembled the vocal folds and tongue inside an architectural voice box.
By working within the parameters of human sound production in a live and devised format, the piece employs the notion that communication strategies transcend physical restriction, that beauty in voice is never limited by quality, be it voiceful or voiceless. The performers work within the audience creating dialogues across space, at times engaging directly with the audience as part of the work, bringing the reality of vocal and visual communication to direct engagement.
Elements of the piece are based on the ‘The Rainbow Passage’, a text read by patients attending voice clinics to enable Speech and Language Therapists to assess the voice. The work manipulates the speaking voice, making use of alliteration, unusual vowel and consonant combinations in a performance that manipulates harmonics, resonance and reverberation.
The performers in Voice Human Action range in age from fifteen to sixty three and are from a variety of backgrounds - performing arts students, school pupils, further education tutors, friends of the artist, actors and actresses, researchers, musicians, a chorister and a writer. They are:
Zoë Blake : Caila Carr : Helen Cartwright : Helen Judge : Pauline Judge : Kirsten Lavers : Mike Levy
Rob Levy : Sheila Levy : Andrew Lovett : Elspeth Owen : Ella Wade –Jones
Euan Williams : Sue Williams : Caroline Wright : Laura Wright
click here to read review by Rosemary Westell
also performed at Camberwell Arts Festival 2006
www.camberwellarts.org
REPEATER : 2005
Durational performance, Cork Ireland for Soundworks, part of the European Capital of Culture programme
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This work was performed in the university music building in Cork – an old monastery that was once used as a place for refuge and retreat. The piece was based around the continuous repetition of the Ten repetitious sound of the writing was transferred through radio mics to the area outside the performance space announcing the action to the audience before they encountered the artist. Repeater explores the power of repetition as a way of learning and embodiment of information, it plays on the religious communicative practice of power and control and the value of regular routine to instill knowledge.
also performed at Camberwell Arts Festival 2006
www.camberwellarts.org
SPEND AND MAKE : 2005
Performance at Homebase, Colchester - Part of Spend and Make with Ben and Holly
10-Core was performed as part of Spend and Make – 15 artists each with £50 and a car parking space for a studio and 3 hours to make an artwork.
Knowing my limitations with DIY and my inability to be practical, it was an easy decision to focus on the female ‘making’ crafts and to transpose these into the male dominated world of DIY materials. Electrical Flex became wool and extendable paint rollers became knitting needles in a durational performance that played on the monotony of women’s work, the repetitious actions that are often manifest in female activity and the struggle of escaping domesticity (philosophically and physically as the knitting became increasingly heavy and unwieldy as it grew in size).
Other artists taking part included TNWK, Richard Dedomenici, Pat Derrick, Mel Donahoe abd Stephanie Douet.
THE VISITOR EXPERIENCE : 2004
Performance and guide book
Cambridge Art works is a vibrant studio group in Cambridge with a recently built gallery space – the result of successful fundraising. To coincide with the opening of the gallery, an exhibition was staged, guest curated by Kirsten Lavers (of Taxi Gallery) and planned to use both the indoor and outdoor area for work that challenged the expectation of the usual visitor to the studios over the four weekends of Open Studios.
The Visitor Experience was selected as the outdoor work – a guided tour of the area surrounding the gallery - an unprepossessing yard. Visitors were taken round the collection of artefacts, each with its provenance displayed on museum-like labels. Tours ran several times a day, visitors were asked to assemble at information boards positioned around the site and were taken round by the suitably dressed guide. A fully illustrated guide book was available that gave detailed information about the collection and included an essay by Dr Keith Cunliffe – Keeper of collections for the Manor House Museum, Bury St Edmunds Suffolk.
Visitors were intrigued and amused by their experience, often taking a little time to fully appreciate the humour in the event. Some queried the age of the artefacts, others taking pleasure in the importance granted to everyday items. However the role of an artwork – its function, place and context was undeniably raised with this work as the question ‘what makes an artwork? was posed.
photography : Doug Atfield
THE POETRY RECITAL : 2004
Performance and video
The artist attempts to recite poetry through a series of tied masks onto her face. The masks are made of hospital sheeting onto which is written the word UNDERSTAND in blue food colouring. The colouring is used in medical tests to assess the swallowing capability of patients. It is not harmful if swallowed and blue is a colour not found naturally in the body.
OPEN SHED : 2003
Performance, installation and drawing for Open Sheds and Somewhere; Places of Refuge – an exhibition in Bury St Edmunds Gallery, 2002
The chance to take over a garden shed in the Abbey Gardens in Bury St Edmunds as part of the Somewhere exhibition provided the perfect opportunity to attempt to communicate with the public in ways other than using the voice. Inside the shed, I was able to converse freely but once outside I observed a self-imposed rule not to speak, communicating only through body language and improvised sign language. All my forays into the gardens were documented and recorded onto a large drawn map inside the shed together with collected items gathered on my excursions.
The festival artist-in-residence, Jo Roberts, was conducting a series of guided walks around the town of Bury and I spent time with her on a walk contrasting my silence with her vocal pronouncements along the way.
This work was also performed in North Shields for the Globe Gallery.
THE DINNER PARTY : 2002
Performance
The Dinner Party is performed amongst a group of friends who have been invited to dinner. The guests arrive and are seated at a table and are each served a plate of rice paper and a pen. They proceed to engage in pleasant conversation across the table writing down their spoken words onto the paper. In time the paper is cleared from the table and then re-served inside a tureen having been torn into many small pieces. Each guest is helped to a portion of the paper and begins to eat, speaking only the words they have embodied.
The work The work takes the exchange of information to the literal extreme as the guests become the audience and the embodiment of all the spoken conversations.
THE BIG THROW : 2001
Performance Lowestoft Beach Suffolk
Working with pupils from Denes High School on a Commissions east project I became aware of their desire to leave their hometown and explore other parts of the UK. The Big Throw came about as an offshoot to my Commissions East work (a series of works in shop windows in the town made by the pupils). Twenty pebbles were collected from the beach and cast into resin encasing drawings, objects and texts written by the pupils about their aims for the future. In one symbolic action these were thrown into the sea as a statement for freedom.