Material can seem disconnected to the human, it has a way of disassociating itself, we give it life only to then shut it down, we divorce it because it never truly belongs to us, it becomes possession, because it’s outside. Yet it speaks just like us…
Through picking up the material it becomes part of the body and the body forms a new body part, its agency also runs through the body. Part of its circulatory system, its respiratory system…it breathes -new life. What draws me in is the new discovery. With performance art it can not be apprehended, and cannot be ‘corrected.’
The paint is not only a signifier, for an outward/visual representation but it also speaks of an internal language. I apply the paint directly using my hands the paint asks for a one to one bond. The figure appears less human, the skin is being displaced, objectified (?) By doing this it blurs the idea of a singular definition object and human, or material and human. I started to realise that I can imply object but the act of objectification relies on others… Objects are often humanised, humans are often objectified. What if we’re all interlinked like the transporting systems we have in place to buy these materials, this spirit could be embedded in the material. By selecting products/ material we are able to gain these complex relationships with others and create new connections.
In Maori culture, the clan celebrate potlatch and often apply white clay to indicate status/age within the tribe but also to be physically and spiritually bonded to the land . Maybe the clown paint is a reference to my white working class background. I am often ousted for my Birmingham accent , only really by white middle class people. In the macroscope of it all maybe it relates to the England – American shared idiocy and contradiction. It is no coincidence that after brexit and just before Trump, the clown craze broke out like a premonition or was it a distraction before the event. It was as though we already new what absurdity faced us. My performances were just days before the craze, coincidence?
We forget material has agency, it has a life we forget it because we rely on visual/s. Yet this is the very thing that can and does deceive us.
This particular piece was an endurance-based work. When I think of performance art I think of a few artists one Artist being Sandra Johnston, whom uses bare/minimal materials and her own body as the activating role within her work, her body is a material. In the untitled, work the body becomes naked from the removal of white paint. The water was very cold but the feeling lost its sensation over time. The objective slips into intuitive actions, I felt myself push past the coldness an inhuman encounter arose no longer feeling ‘naked’ in the conventional sense. There was no sense of self in this manner, but gained a deeper sense of nakedness. The material-immaterial being attempts to clean itself, the movements seem sincere like a swan- like, hands feeding through the volume of water. The washing removes a physical layer and taps into the internal layer as the body attempts to get clean.
The clown paint is the closest idea of whiteness that I identify with. Not so much the striking white but the striking white of the clown , it’s whiteness is absurd, its fakery is crude and laughable. As a child, I never felt clean, I went to a Christian school in dirty non-uniform maybe a jumper sometimes a floral dress underneath, whatever was clean enough I was dressed in. The clothes weren’t unified to what other school children wore. Which meant I was alienated. I don’t identify with ‘White’ or white. White supposedly symolises purity , holiness in the European sense of the word. And yet when I think of white its unattainable and impure in many ways. Which is what I’ve started to realise from the impurity of paint/ blood shed .
As I apply the paint its oily, and claggy, it leaves traces, it never dries. Its impermanent, my identity is removed from the body and through the performance ‘I am’ temporally displaced. The female form seems absurd in this way. ‘It’ appears otherly (but not Godly). The unknown male voyeur looks at the female white form until she reveals herself hairy and naked. He then walks away. The unknown man ruptures the act, I am temporally brought forward, all at once I become aware. It takes a sufficient amount of time till I become absent to myself again, but this does occur until the paint becomes more and more absent. Then I started to feel the cold. This might be due to the materially of the paint thining – the oil works as a barrier – the thinning conducted an emotive change that I became conscious of, therefore my actions became more conscious. I prefer my performance/ action led work to have no foreseeable end, allowing the body/mind to surrender to the acts completely, changed consciousness as if I am the viewer, surprised by my own actions only able to verbalise in the aftermath. I’m not sure what happens here, as the white woman is in fleeting states, and so am I but we are never together.
