Performance and film, with Art Surgery, Newlyn Art Gallery (2006)

There was some intentional irony in the working title, as it may or may not have been in the least entertaining.

Transitions is a platform for trying things out in the gallery, works in process. Andy Whall & Delpha Hudson had worked together curating other artists’ work, or  worked individually as visual and performance artists but curating themselves was entirely new, as was making theatrical collaborative work.

The endgame was to create a performance or spectacle in four days.  We built an installation in collaboration with Neil Robson, studied clowning, comedy, breaking the fourth wall, with our mentor Mr B clown. We improvised and devised, using a range of sources, fragments, narratives, texts; the story of Walter Benjamin and his black briefcase, text as landscape, archives (from our own work and the gallery’s), examining tensions between live art and performance art, as well as between our ‘curator’ and ‘artist’ personas. We wanted to explore failure, spectacle and live art theory.

Visitors to the gallery were welcome to watch, engage, ask questions, make suggestions, intervene, extrapolate, and stop disputes if necessary.

The process was documented by film maker Alban Roinard, and as complete failure was a necessity, and the whole process a fiasco, the show did go on but it was probably not entertaining.

http://vimeo.com/2430617

performance art

 

Have a look at other projects by curators Delpha Hudson & Andy Whall as Art Surgery 1998-200