- Venue
- Bonington Gallery
- Location
When evaluating the success of any contemporary art event it is necessary to remember that the effect Curators exert on the experience of an artwork is not universally felt. A Polish friend of mine explained that in her experience the idea of the Curator is not dissimilar to that of the Jail Warder, segregating and categorizing the work in order to lock down meaning and guard against misinterpretation.
Expo a performance and live art platform supported by Future Factory and the Bonnington gallery in Nottingham since 1991 offers a critical framework for emerging artists with an interest in performative practice. Steered by Artists collective Graft, Expo has opened up sites and zones of activity in Nottingham beyond the space of the gallery, and through a structure of workshops and seminars offers an organic development of ideas and ongoing critique of the performers relationship to the audience.
In the 1851 gallery, a man crouches in a black room no more than a few feet high.
Viewed through a porthole in the side of the construction, sweat drips from his reddened face as he continuously washes and cooks onions in a large pot. In Joost Nieuwenburg’s “Common Sense” the polished gallery space is filled with the uncomfortable smell of cooking onions, which filter up from a small grate in the ceiling of the structure.
Across town visitors enter a dank, subterranean cave presenting a doll of their own likeness to a ‘healer’. In Rachel Parry’s one-on-one performance “From the belly of the beast” the subject then sits down in front of the ‘healer’, who is partially obscured by an ornate screen, and taking their hands in hers the likeness is washed and treated in a ritualistic fashion. On the final evening we are all gathered in the Bonnington gallery for a performative lecture by Jiva Parthipan entitled “Necessary Journeys”, in which Parthipan recounts his inability to take part in a residency in America and Mexico due to miscommunication, bureaucracy and red-tape. The gallery setting adding authority to the narration and gives sharp contrast to the spasmodic performative acts which relate his frustration at his subjugation to political systems.
The relationship between Performance and site is a difficult one. Performers and facilitators when venturing into the public realm must be wary of the potential tyranny of performance. The spectacle interrupting the audiences relationship with the site and disregarding it’s meaning and associations. The performances described are indicative of the sensitivity to site and context that permeated Expo 2006. The 12 participating artists were allowed the space, and support to find new ways to enact their disparate concerns, and allowed an audience to engage with the piece on their own terms.
The organisers showed bravery in divorcing themselves from zones of didactic activity and seeking out new audiences, which ultimately resulted in a more valuable experience for all involved.
