- Venue
- The Barbican Curve
- Location
- London
“This is disgusting” – were the words of a middle-aged man as he fled the scene of Eddie Peake’s solo show Forever Loop at the Barbican Curve. Indeed, Eddie’s work is essentially synonymous with nudity nowadays, so I did expect wobbling willies and bouncing boobs, yet this gentleman’s strong reaction, I did not.
Stepping into the space, you enter a maze of plasterboard corridors – the path is dark and ominous but nothing compared to the climax that is to come and in the pit of my belly, I felt the suspense rising. Along the way, peepholes provide a window to view screens looping (comparatively tame) videos of dancers performing a choreographed routine, spliced with sequences of an underground radio studio and home shots of Peake as a toddler playing in the bath. Moments of shock turn to awe and “aww” instantaneously.
A top the scaffolding tower, I gazed at the chaos underfoot – at this point is when I first spied the two nude performers and heard the boorish statements of the astounded man. The performers, completely butt-naked except for sparklingly white trainers, pose and traverse the space all the while mirroring the scenes within the videos. I stand mesmerized by the jiggling flesh and deafened by their war cries of “Who dem bitches tryna tell me about time and space? Suck my dick!”
Add on top of all that, a florescent pink wall mural, Perspex bears with scarves, a metal figure with a box head filled with the crap of everyday life and a lady in a sheer bodysuit gliding around on a pair of roller-skates – like our own Guardian angel.
However, I keep going back to that guy’s words. What is disgusting? Is the human body disgusting? Skin is skin, and yet because it is not disassociated by screen, it becomes repulsive or horrifying. The only bit that made me squirm was the piercing stare of the performers – we watch them and they watch us. As our eyes lock in a moment of intimacy, the positions of vulnerability switch and I find myself shifting awkwardly. Nevertheless, their nudity is necessary to probe the conditions of sexuality (or lust) in our own skin and the contemporary landscape – which clearly has a lot more room for change as these performers continue to be condemned for what God gave ’em.
A labyrinth of works and a labyrinth of ideas; the only fault I can find in Forever Loop is its potential to be ‘too much’. When you throw up so many issues into such a small space, there is bound to be some that fall short. Even now, I struggle to weave connections and unravel the complex network of concepts. Although overwhelming, Eddie Peake triumphs in creating work that is the antithesis of passive and overall, it left me questioning for days – a sign of success.
