Seven hour performance/installation.
Trace Installation Gallery Cardiff Wales.
The CAT Show March 17th 2007.
This was my first live performance for a period of seven years. I had a year and a half to plan and ferment the idea of the performance, which was a part of a huge international festival of performance art in the United Kingdom. The Trace Gallery is unique (possibly in the world) in that it only presents the work of time based artists. The Director, Andre Stitt, invited me to use the gallery space and knew my work from the 1980’s and 90’s and encouraged me to re-evaluate my position. My performance used real ice age fossil animal teeth, sculptures made from found materials and objects, powder pigment, a curious enclosure made from sticks and tape (upon which I stuck many poems, drawings and words). It also included the balancing of a large pole on my head tied to which, were fetish objects that resembled worms or foetal forms. A soundtrack composed by Brownsierra, of ice cracking and machines whirring and chiming played continuously for seven hours. The performance is a mesmeric ritual journey through time with images suggesting vast time cycles and ancient cosmic ceremonial actions. I stopped making performances because I became bored with it. I can only make a performance now if I really feel I have to and I have no interest in becoming a stereotype or parody of the arena known as live art. True originality exists far away from the hubbub of the self conscious masturbation that is dressed up as the so-called “shocking” avant-garde.
