I came across Antoni’s work in ‘The artists body’ a book by Tracey Warr. It was right at the beginning of my MA in October when I first saw the sticking black and white image of a woman with her head to the floor pushing away those that looked on by painting the gallery floor with black hair dye. I drew it in my sketchbook so that I could take time looking over it. She was crouched, like a cat on the floor, dressed in black with gloves that had been splattered with dye in the process. I became fascinated with this act and fantasized about being that woman. In the act of submission, mopping the floor, cleaning, but not cleaning, marking and intimidating her audience by threatening to mark them in the process.
In order to understand this work which I had only seen an image of in a book I decided that I would re-enact it in the gallery space at my studio. In this way it would be public but I knew that I was unlikely to get any kind of audience because of the location. There were several compromises I had to make to the original, as well as not being guaranteed an audience I couldn’t justify buying hair dye, nor could I suggest painting the actual floor in the gallery space as it had been sanded and cleaned by hand prior to my arrival. I remembered I had a pot of black ink that I had used for ‘Headspace’ a few years ago and there was about have a pot left. In the 99p store I splashed out on wall paper paste which I added to the ink to make a painterly consistency.
I had a roll of white paper that I could cover the floor of the gallery with. It was an off-cut from a printer in Holbeck outside Leeds that I had managed to acquire last year and there was plenty left. I cut off the colour from a back jumper and wore my sisters black shorts and thick black tights. I had now gathered the elements that I would use to recreate Loving Care. As well as performing the act it was important for me to document the event and I suppose to some extent I may have been subconsciously recreating the image I had seen in the book in October.
‘The first time I did Loving Care, it was not a performance; I did it as a relic and I showed it that way. It didn’t work! I realized that it wasn’t like Gnaw where the history was on the surface of the object and a viewer could re-create how it was made by looking at it. While making Loving Care, I realized that the power was in watching me mop the floor. The audience is the wild card. I am collaborating with them and I’m never sure how they will respond.’
Interview with Janine Antoni by Stuart Horodner, BOMB 66/Winter 1999, ART New York
