- Venue
- Sideshow
- Location
- East Midlands
The Other Interior
Sarah Duffy, Sixes & Sevens, Nottingham Sideshow
It seems appropriate that it was the night before Halloween when I stayed at the Ibis hotel in Nottingham whilst visiting the British Art Show in Nottingham. The main show was everything I expected, but it was the stay in the hotel room that night that leaves the greatest resonance. The reason was that it was the venue for a startling and sometimes disturbing performance-art piece for an audience of one, i.e. me. ‘The Other Interior‘, by Sarah Duffy, is a form of ghost story folded into a mystery and wrapped in a conundrum which, surprisingly, all takes place within the confines of a single hotel room.
The experience uses an impressive combination of intense performances, brilliant use of the details of the room layout and unexpected props to transport the participant from the ordinariness of the hotel room into a time-and-space-shifting micro –universe, containing the residual traces of past and future events. The movie references are pervasive but never take over the narrative. Try to imagine the shuffled sequences and loops of Memento meeting the voyeurism of Blue Velvet, as written by Michael Haneke with yourself as the protagonist, then you get something of the flavour. Despite these apparent references this is no simple homage. It has its own unique atmosphere and, at its heart,‘The Other Interior‘, is a profound and moving evocation of the human condition – the hotel room acting as a potent metaphor for our singular and ephemeral existence in a populous and anonymous world. To say more about the way it achieves this would be to blow the suspense.
Sarah Duffy is a new name in Nottingham. She is a member of, what is thought of by some observers I spoke to, an over-hyped but elusive group of young artists in Nottingham known as “Sixes & Sevens”. No-one I met can recall actually seeing their work. However, on this evidence, and the fact that they have two pieces in the Sideshow, (the other being ‘Pile‘, a group show co-curated by Simon Franklin and Craig Fisher), suggests that they have substance and may be a group to watch.
“The Other Interior” must be one of the most un-economic ways of presenting art and presumably only exists through the auspices of the Nottingham Sideshow – congratulations to them. Sadly, since the spending review, this type of patronage might already be a thing of the past. It was actually cheaper than simply booking the hotel room on the Ibis website, so I can’t see how there was there was any financial reward for the artist at all. There will be only sixteen performances on Saturdays and Sundays until mid-December. If Sarah Duffy continues to produce work of this immersive and visceral intensity I suspect that many more people will experience this performance by word of mouth (and perhaps, in the future, even remember how they too were there). If you plan to stay in a hotel to visit the British Art Show over the next few week-ends, catch this if you can. Even if you live in Nottingham, it’s worth a night away from home, and you even get time to sleep.
You have to book through sideshow and it’s a bit hard to find on their web-site so here is a link:
http://www.sideshow2010.org/artnot/exhibition/aug1…
Bernard James
London
