I was pleasantly surprised that my month long residency at the first floor at Highbridge studios and gallery – the large empty first floor, during July inspired me to write so regularly. Often the space was dark, stuffy, and dusty. Once my ritual of opening all of the many windows each day was done and I sat in my the space, listening to the sound of the city and the calling seagulls, my long term habit of writing in my journal seemed to give me a course of thought and contemplation that was needed to create. The large old physical space encouraged a physical response and as my work is rooted in responding to the processes of the body and responding to those, a certain flow seemed to come about.
I found the final evening and round up to ‘In Conversation – a body of work researching links between art, artists and well being’, at Highbridge on the 18th August, with Kath, meeting the group, the groups work, showing Helen’s blog and work, seeing David’s work again and people sitting watching my video of ‘blue’, enabled a certain finishing of a beginning, of a kind of circle.
Then reading all of my writing out loud and hearing my own voice say the words – which I didn’t do on the evening of the performance – (I had the text put up around the space), hearing the rhythms of the words and sentences in that space where they were thought and produced, gave a new sense and weight to the work I hdan’t expected. Particularly the audience’s responses and questions, which were stimulating. Maybe this goes once again back to the debate about performance, what it is, does it matter where and how work is performed – and how does the nature of that performance work and installation manifest when responding to a particular space? These were some of the questions which we began to explore and discuss after the Pina Bausch showing, at the beginning of the project, though the conversations were much more about meaning and content I believe – particularly with the airing of very differing views regarding performance from the Live art and Performance art worlds and the understanding of what performance might or could be… Specifically beginning to debate what is performance, acting, action, and artifice. Of what is the role of the artist? I have very clear views with regard to what kinds of things one should consider and the history of how the performer is regarded using the body as a means of expression, what those pitfalls might be coming from the performance art and dance world and the power of expression the body holds, particularly as a woman in this society and the codes and boundaries we find we have to work with and around. How we might challenge those and not compromise our own selves as performers – in particular women performers who are interested in their work having integrity and wanting to make work which challenges violence against women and sterotypes… What is authentic? What is real? What is exploitative of yourself and/or others?…..
This is a conversation I would very much like to continue and explore, particularly in relation to site and site responsive work which I am heavily engaged with currently as a performance installation artist who also writes. It has been great to be part of something larger where we can begin to ask questions with respect and integrity of one another and make a beginning to possibly forge some deeper links re a curiosity of one another’s practice. Also, through Kath and her generous group of visitors to the artists at Highbridge, an opportunity to develop other conversations that enable another context for the work to be seen and accessed through which I feel has enabled a bringing of other meanings to the work, the world and a certain mindfulness of our art and practice.
