BIG DEAL SEXY100

I am showing ten new paintings in the exhibition BIG DEAL SEXY100, curated by Stimulus Ltd. The private view is on Thursday 8th September 2011, from 5pm until 9pm, with performances and work by 100 artists. The exhibition is at wall to wall, 8-9 Spring Place, London N5. It's a ten minute walk from Kentish Town tube on the Northern Line.

Here are links to BIG DEAL and Stimulus Ltd websites.

Wrapping: Sun and Moon Performance

Tin foil and crumpled flag, after the performance

On Saturday April 23rd 2011 I did a performance with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly as The Sun and Moon. We were invited to perform by Micalef, for the final event of his exhibition The Wine Presses of Luvah. The event, at the Freedom Bookshop gallery, Whitechapel, was the third during Micalef’s exhibition, where he read his new Blake poems, and hosted various performances, including The Hoova of Luvah. Micalef added new poems for each event, which were based on things that happened in the previous readings and performances.

Micalef’s request/instructions/suggestions for our performance were only that Marco would be the Moon and I would be the Sun ('wear something diaphanous'), and that we 'do something about Blake's Albion'. Marco suggested we buy lots of tin foil – we decided on two large, wide rolls – and use two balls of grey wool; he suggested I wear yellow. We found nothing suitable and yellow in the charity shop, so Marco brought a yellow T-shirt of his own, with a mythological print on the front and back, for me to wear over my green dress. I wore my hair – which is long and yellow-ish – down. Marco brought a silver suit, trimmed with gold, for himself, and wore gold trainers with it. We changed into our costumes in the tiny toilet underneath the Freedom Bookshop gallery.

It was unseasonably hot weather on the Easter weekend, weather for shorts and dresses. At the event both Calum and John had arrived in shorts and intense, bright yellow T-shirts. This was coincidental, and not part of the exhibition, but perhaps the same awareness of energy and heat had prompted their choice of clothing as informed ours in the performance.

Micalef read a set of three Blake poems, after which we began our performance. There was already a large and worn Union Jack lying on the gallery floor. In a previous performance Marco had lain under it as Albion, with a horn held erect like a giant penis, sleeping and then rousing. This was referred to in one of Micalef’s subsequent poems. I began our performance by taking the flag and carefully folding it into a neat pile, placing it back on the floor. As I did this, the small but noisy audience paid little or no attention, continuing to talk and to encourage a dog to scamper around noisily on the wooden floor-boards right beside me. Marco felt afterwards that he liked the way people kept talking at the beginning, but also found it sexist – they talked as I folded, but when he arrived in the performance they began to watch and be quiet. Perhaps it appeared I was just tidying up for Marco. I felt the tension and ambiguity of performing, unnoticed, wondering ‘when will people realize we’ve begun?’, and the gradual focussing of attention on our activities. There was a juncture between being there ‘just doing’, and ‘performing’. I thought, as I folded the flag, of the women in the launderette folding sheets, and of times with my mother, folding sheets, ‘me to you and you to me’. The lack of attention - or respect? – for this part of the performance seems consistent with the quiet invisibility of such tasks. The folding was a preparation, a preparatory meditation, a clearing away before a beginning, and an allusion to bed-making (itself entwined with the cycles of day and night, sun and moon).

When the flag was folded, Marco walked over to me, in his thick, wool, shiny silver suit, and I helped him to sit on the floor. He sat with his legs straight, outstretched, and his back vertical, forming a right angle, parallel to the wall. He sat extremely still. I took one of the rolls of tin foil, which I had been holding like a wand, and began to unwind it, wrapping it around Marco’s head. His head was recently shaved and so as I wrapped it in foil I could press the thin metal directly on to both his skull and face. As I did so I thought of the lampshades I make at home by wrapping my own head in foil to form a lampshade-like shape, and a residue of my facial features, which then hangs from the ceiling, shedding out light. I was careful to press gently but firmly onto the foil to capture Marco’s head without hurting him. I felt I was looking for his features, looking for and making the ‘Man in the Moon’. Marco said afterwards it felt very caring, as I pressed the foil to his face.

I began to wrap the foil further down, towards Marco’s neck. I wrapped by circling him, moving my whole body around him, orbiting. As I wound myself and the foil around him, concealing his neck, and shoulders, I followed my progress by unwinding a ball of soft, grey wool, binding and tying it over the foil, holding the shape in place. Marco said this part of the process felt precarious at times, that the foil ‘case’ might slip off, or burst apart. It would have spoiled the effect if bits of the moon had broken off. Breaking the illusion – however nursery rhyme-like or absurd the illusion was – would undermine the potency of the performance, the ritual. The precariousness of the ‘encasing’ demanded my focussed attention and careful application of pressure, a certain amount of balance and quick dexterity to get the 'moon’ wrapped up. It was important to entirely encase Marco, to make a solid and complete shape of him – to transform him into a shape, an object, but an abstract entity too. I felt as I wound and bound him that I was making something precious that could be broken – the ‘object moon’ and the ‘idea moon’.

It was such a hot evening that as I circled round Marco, bent over doing it, I began to feel light-headed and a little dizzy, over-heating slightly. Marco, I realized, inside a thick suit and an ever-growing tight foil casing, must be starting to sweat, heating up with the radiating, reflecting, intensification of the foil. His whole head was entombed, his mouth and nostrils covered. I hoped he could breathe ok.

I encased Marco’s torso, with his arms strapped to his sides, with swathes of foil. I tied him up with more wool. Then I put one hand on his back, and one under his legs, stretched out on the floor still, and guided him backwards to lie on his back. As he tipped back he retained the ‘L’ shape, his legs rising up into the air, to form the inverse ‘L’, or almost-crescent shape. The movement was comical, absurd – a ‘tipping up’, as Marco said afterwards. The cartoon-ish-ness of this movement suited the foil ‘moon’ we were making. I began to complete the crescent, this time winding the foil from the top of Marco’s gold toes downwards to his belly. Part way through this process I heard a muffled sound from his foil-head which made me aware that he was overheating and struggling to breathe. I poked a hole through the foil, where I guessed his mouth was, for him to breathe better and steam to escape.

Time was pressing, with the audience’s short attention span, the heat, and Marco starting to steam inside the foil and his legs becoming exhausted – ‘it was like being at the gym’, he commented about the legs-aloft posture afterwards. Marco was blind for the duration, his eyes enclosed in foil, his hearing similarly muffled, suffering a strange sensory deprivation combined with sensory-intensification, of the heat and posture. There was finite time to complete the moon wrapping. Timing was all important; duration was palpable, emphasized by the condition of heat and tiredness, energy manifested. I thought of the cycles of sun and moon, imagining the sun as having tasks, tasks to achieve before night, preparations to complete, routines that must be performed and punctual. The darkness dependant on the energy of the light. The formation of rituals by the intertwining of light and dark. Marco said afterwards that I was dancing round him like a maypole, as I wound him with foil. It had felt like an abstracted, dance-like ritual.

Marco, his back flat to the ground, his legs outstretched, was now entirely encased in foil. His body became an object – a crescent, a silver-moon-crescent. An absurd toy, improvised moon. Man in the moon. I took hold of his legs and guided them to the floor, stretching him out flat, almost feeling like I was breaking him in half. No longer the moon crescent, now a body, a 'mummy', a light and heat emitting presence. John said it felt as if Marco was emitting radioactivity, that the audience should be protected from the energy – that the foil was to protect the audience from radioactivity, like a special suit. I was conscious of Marco and my heat, from the activity, the circling, the wrapping, the reflectivity. I had the impression of a piece of salmon or meat wrapped for baking. Geraldine commented that ‘You trussed him up like a kipper’.

Once Marco was stretched out I took the folded flag and shook it out, like shaking a blanket or duvet. I laid it over him like a bed cover. I felt I was putting the moon to bed, completing a point in a cycle. The moon going in. I felt caring, patient, protective. I sat at his feet, crouched, like at the foot of a bed – watching, guarding, paused, waiting. Though the pause was brief – necessarily as Marco was too hot and the audience distractable – my moment crouched at the foot of the moon was a clear, weighted punctuation.

I rose from my post and pulled the flag-cover from the sleeping moon and cast it aside. Then, I held up Marco’s legs back into a crescent and began quickly to unwrap them. I roughly unwound the wool binding, tangled, and tore off shards of foil, ripping and scattering them like sun-moon-light across the floor. I held his legs, revealed now to the innard of silver and gold suit and gold trainers, and pushed the legs down as I guided his body up to sitting, into the ‘L’ shape, his torso still wrapped. I continued the reverse process, of unwrapping, tearing the foil from his body, feeling the heat beating out. When I pulled the last pieces from around Marco’s head, his face emerged, red and streaming with sweat, having endured the intense reflective heat, basted inside the foil shell and in the thick wool suit. He was the heat emitting core. I squeezed and gently shook his shoulder to ‘wake’ the moon, a gesture of ‘time to get up’. He opened his eyes, and I helped him to his feet, the silver core now animate, amidst the scattered foil shards.


More crumpled foil and flag, after the performance


The performance ‘proper’ came to an end here, but after a minute or so I returned and began to gather the foil shards and compress them into a ball, in a gesture of tidying. Marco joined me, scavenging on the floor for foil, to create a huge sphere of foil, a ‘full moon’, from the remnants of the performance. The foil-moon-ball was later placed, by Marco, on top of one of Micalef’s sculptures, to become a final element in the sculpture, a full moon hovering above a Loovah-lampshade.



The foil-moon on top of Micalef's Loovah-Lampshade sculpture

To read about other performances I've done, including more with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, please click here.

AISLE Performance

As part of GHost III, an evening of performance and film in St. John's Church, Bethnal Green, Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly and I created AISLE, a ten minute performance resonating with ideas of penance, pilgrimage and ritual. Ghost III took place from 6pm to 10pm on Friday 17th December 2010, organized by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal.


View inside St. John's Church, Bethnal Green, looking towards the altar end of the church. Taken during the rehearsal for AISLE - you can just see the blurred crawling figures near the white screen.




The dark pews in the dimly lit church interior for the AISLE performance.




The lights in the church were low, the pews dim, so that their occupants were barely distinguishable. The aisle of the church was comparatively more illuminated, its flattened well-worn pink-red carpet singled out by the lighting as the one route through the church. As the audience mumbled and rustled, after the previous performance ended and whilst waiting for ours to begin, Marco and I made our separate ways from where we had been sitting to the top of the aisle. We knelt down and began to untie our shoe laces. We took off our shoes, and then our socks. Our naked feet indicated the beginning of a ritual, with a sense of awe or respect for the forthcoming actions; coupled with intimations of a dance; and suggestions of insanity and deprivation. Observing shoeless people I notice that they are perceived as the abject, the utterly vulnerable, the insane. On the occasions I’ve removed my shoes in public I’ve been met with concern and consternation. Perhaps looking comfortably hippy-ish or high-heeled exhausted mitigates against this – but as an otherwise-outwardly-normal person shoelessness is a breach of sanity and comprehensibility. In our performance we wanted to evoke the ritual and niceties of religious and other ceremonies where shoe removal is involved - outside a house or a temple, in a newly carpeted home – suggesting reverence, occasion, respect – but to destabilize these ideas during the performance. We wanted to unsettle readings of our rationale, to make interpretation awkward. Bare, naked feet felt liberating, comfortable, practical. It was a route into closeness with the ground and integration with our movements – and a nod to nakedness. Our bare-footedness was carefully planned, yet it went barely noticed at first.




Kneeling to remove shoes at the start of the aisle.




Ghost-blur kneeling to remove shoes.





Starting to crawl.



From our bare-foot-kneeling position we lowered our whole bodies onto the ground and stretched out our arms before us, prostrated. We began to slither-crawl forward. The moment of transition from not-crawling to crawling had the sensation of diving into a swimming pool; of being on a clear and significant threshold - a sensation which was familiar from previous crawl performances. We had done a practice crawl at my studio a few days earlier, where we used the hallway, at the end of a long corridor. The floor is stone, or concrete, and was freezing. We slid side by side on our bellies in the narrow space, negotiating our movements and interactions. The cold slammed into our stomachs, my top riding up so that my belly and midriff were directly in contact with the freezing surface. When we arrived at the church to rehearse on the day of the performance we saw that the aisle was carpeted, and I had a sense of almost-guilt, that the crawl would be so much more comfortable and warm than I had expected and intended. Yet, during that rehearsal we were responded to with the comment ‘You must have done something really awful to have to do that much penance!’ So the resonance of pain and suffering seemed still to be present.




The carpet of the aisle, ant's-eye view. And ghost-blurred crawling figures.





The screen at the end of the aisle, with two 'will o' the wisp' lights, which we are crawling towards. Crawlers'-eye-view.






When we began our AISLE crawl, the audience, attuned perhaps to vertical or louder events, carried on chatting and drinking and glancing around for the first few moments where we silently, subtly moved. Our crawl was a belly-flat-to-the-floor type of crawl, dragging ourselves along with outstretched arms.  We moved towards the altar, slowly, painfully, painstakingly.  Whilst we crawled, from above our heads on the balcony, a choir began to sing a repeated refrain of ‘again and again and again and...’ As each phrase was fading out a solo voice emerged from the opposite balcony to respond with another refrain of ‘again and again and again...’ the single and multiple calls merging, overlapping and pulling each other onwards. The music was mantra-like, enigmatic, ambiguous, but insistent. It was gentle and soothing in the tone of the voices, yet its cyclical and unceasing nature carried an element of threat and desperation, of compulsion and castigation. ‘Again’, a word which was embodied in its performance - an ‘onomatopoeic’ singing. Again, a word which I have repeatedly painted and drawn, on tissues, rizlas, canvas, and which Marco has sung in the lyrics of Rex Nemo songs. A word we have both pondered, and returned to; repetition, repetition, repetition. Again: I think of compulsion, addiction, meditation, repetition, history, pattern, inscription. As the ‘again’ refrain began, eyes were drawn around the church, and to the lit aisle with our crawling bodies, and our presence dawned on the audience.




Crawling.





Crawling heads down.




Crawling head up.



There was silence from the audience as we dragged ourselves forward. Marco pulled himself forward with his fists clenched, his legs a dead weight; tiring, he sighed and groaned at the effort, communicated visually and audibly. His body clad in lighter-coloured clothes than mine, and his accompanying sounds, drew attention to his figure, dominating the dual-crawl. I wore dark clothes, contrasting to Marco’s in colour, but similarly normal everyday type of clothing, baggy trousers and jumper, so that our crawl appeared perhaps spontaneous, part of the everyday world. I crawled differently - silently, smoothly, stretching out my arms and fingers, clawing into the carpet, dragging myself, legs slightly bent to give a little propulsion. I felt lost and contained within the world of crawling, the slithering movement, the sensation of the floor against my stomach, tops of my feet and palms. The visual and stylistic contrast emphasized the difference between the two crawlers – unified in an activity, a purpose, but possibly in competition, or negotiation.




Crawling down the aisle.



Our movements were low to the ground, an inversion or perversion of a conventional procession/perambulation down the aisle. I was aware of the history of processions along the aisle – the routine church services, communions, marriages and funerals that take place there - and of our laying our own ritual over these, our intervention in ritual. As a crawling couple perhaps we prompted thoughts of Adam and Eve, and the serpent, forever crawling and eating the dust – an image of conflated Christian mythology, contorting ideas of sin and shame and temptation into an ambiguous and malleable spectacle. Pilgrimages and penitent journeys which process hand and knee through villages and towns, streets and floors, to end in the church, echoed through the crawl – events of endurance and tradition in some places, but which are unfamiliar in Bethnal Green. Mexican and Polish friends pointed out these histories to me, after previous crawling performances, though the impulse to crawl, for me, came from somewhere internal and unorganized – perhaps informed, osmotically, by centuries of others’ crawls? Our crawl necessitated the audience to suppose their own idea of our purpose. Ahead of us, at the altar end of the aisle there was a large white screen on which two tiny ‘will o’ the wisp’ lights were roaming, flitting, searching. We moved towards these - drawn, beckoned, impelled, seeking, the lights giving a logic and object to our movements. ‘Never underestimate the power of ritual,’ Marco had said to me some time before we made the performance, words which continue to turn over in my mind.





Crawling towards the table-obstacle.



Our crawl had been intended to be, at times, something of a 'battle' - we would verge across each other's path, tussle, barge. This battle would have its climax in our negotiation of an obstacle placed half way down the aisle – a table covered with a heavy velvet cloth, and a film projector mounted on it. The obstacle occupied half the width of the aisle and, we realized in rehearsal, that from our awkward horizontal positions it would be a case of under or around, one at a time. We decided to use the obstacle to further dramatize our struggle. When we were near to the obstacle Marco got ahead of me. I crawled faster and, there not being space for us both to pass through the gap side by side, I began to pull myself onto Marco’s back. I crawled and dragged myself up his legs, across his back, and slightly kicked in order to get over his head and beyond the obstructed bit of the aisle first. It became something of a race. I felt myself pushing my foot back into Marco’s hand or head, ruthlessly, attempting to ‘win’ - at the same time realizing the playful and sexual connotations of this over-body crawl, with its intimacy and familiarity and entwining. Marco’s passive acceptance of my over-crawl unsettled the gendered idea of competitiveness.



Crawling around the obstacle.





Gail crawling beyond the obstacle.






Hood up.




Gail crawls ahead of Marco.



On the other side of the aisle obstacle Marco’s hood fell over his head, concealing his face, making him appear monk-like. We again crawled side by side, the pace increasing as we saw our destination of the altar nearing. The choir’s refrain had continued to repeat, the lights on the screen continued to flit, and our movement and Marco’s groaning continued too. The build up of repetition in movement and sound, its cycle, progress and yet getting-nowhere-ness, created both tension and meditativeness – a sense of expectation and waiting, and also of being lulled, held, suspended...



Arms outstretched.





Crawling towards the light.




Marco elbows Gail.




Nearly at the altar and screen.





At the end of the aisle, by the altar, screen and lights.







...I arrived first by the altar, dragged myself onto it, still on my belly, and crawled off behind the screen. Marco followed, hauling himself up heavily, legs still unused. We concealed ourselves behind the screen, and listened as the choir’s refrain of ‘again and again …’ faded away. There was a pause, as, we presumed, the audience figured out that the performance had ended. Silence of the audience at the end, after their noise at the start. Then some kind applause, and a shout of ‘Again! Again!’ from someone in the audience. Later, we were asked of the time we spent behind the screen, ‘Were you shagging at the altar? I hoped so.’




Crawling round the corner...





...and onto the altar...




...Marco's feet disappearing...






Music performed by members of the Hackney Secular Choir and Kate Kotcheff.

‘Will o’the wisp’ lights by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal.

All photos by Matt Rowe, except last two (below), by Sarah Sparkes.

You can see a short film of AISLE by Sarah Sparkes and Helen Bee on YouTube.

There's more about GHost events on the GHost blog...

...and on the GHost facebook page.

You can read about two previous performances I did involving crawling, 'Dishclout: The Human Duster' and Crawl on these earlier posts...

...and my first collaborative performance with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, 'Silent Bell Ringing'.

Here's a link to my AGAIN painting in the exhibition 'East End Promise'.

Rex Nemo & the Psychick Selfdefenders + Hackney Secular Singers play Girls Division and Set Your Spirit Free ...at Supernormal Festival, in this YouTube video.

For GHost II, at St John's Church in 2009, I made Crossbones, a short film of the ephemeral memorials at the unconsecrated graveyard...

...and for GHost Hostings, at Senate House in February 2010, the Reverand Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly gave a sermon-performance - you can see a short film of the sermon here

GHost / AISLE

On Friday 17th December I will be doing a performance with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, as part of GHost III, an evening of performance and film in St. John's Church, Bethnal Green. AISLE will be a ten minute performance, resonating with ideas of penance, pilgrimage and ritual.

GHost begins at 6pm - with performances from 8pm and films from 8.30pm - and ends at 10pm. More information about GHost and the other artists taking part can be found on the GHost blog. GHost III is curated by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal, and is part of an ongoing series of exhibitions and 'hostings.'



GHost III
Friday 17th December, 6pm – 10pm
Performances at 8pm
St. John's Church on Bethnal Green
200 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA - next to Bethnal Green tube.



In 2009 I showed my film Crossbones as part of the GHost II evening. Click here to see more about it

Silent Bell Ringing: ‘Remembrance’ Performance

Silent Bell Ringing performance, Gail Burton and Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly. Photo by Geraldine Ryan.

On Saturday 13th November I did a Silent Bell Ringing performance with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly. The piece was devised for ‘Remembrance,’ a day of performance at Bitchwedge Gallery in response to Remembrance Sunday. Memory and loss are recurrent themes in my work, and in the days before the performance, which Marco had been invited to do, I had returned to a text I wrote after listening to the two minutes silence on Radio 3 last year. My writing observed my struggle to identify silence and to comprehend or accept the process of memory I was being presented with. When Marco asked me to collaborate with him on the Remembrance piece, knowing he had recently bought a bell – a beautiful, old, heavy, mottled metal bell – I suggested we perform a silent bell ringing. Marco added that we could muffle the bell’s clapper with a handkerchief, and we decided I would ‘ring’ the modified bell for two minutes, in a silent bell ringing, while he watched in stillness.

Both my and Marco’s work is concerned, at times, with endurance and repetition, often through physical movement/non-movement, e.g. crawling, staring, sitting. This was our first collaboration, and it brought together some of these interests, along with ideas of memory, memorialization and loss. The elements of the performance emerged spontaneously and naturally, embedding the work in a space of personal resonance. On the morning of the performance we searched for a suitable handkerchief in my flat, finding only two unsuitable ones. A patterned silk one which I had bought at Brompton Cemetery, in a jumble sale, and a white cotton one I was intending to embroider for my grandmother, but on which I had so far only stitched the ‘G’, the rest of her name being written in pencil only. Both were too laden with particularity of association. We cycled to Marco’s flat to collect his studio keys, and on arriving there, I noticed a white cotton handkerchief hanging from the fence by the front door. I pointed to it, and Marco lifted it from its seemingly carefully placed position. We examined the monogram in one corner, discovering it to be a ‘G.’ We then cycled to Dalston, to Marco’s studio, to collect the bell and briefly rehearse our performance.

It was now dark and we needed to hurry, to get to the gallery by ten to six, in order to do our performance at the last minute, before it closed at six. We cycled through Dalston, quick-ish, past the end of Ridley Road Market, with the bell hung from Marco’s bike. It rang intermittently, or rather he rang it, and sometimes it rang itself or bashed his leg, or overbalanced him, particularly on corners. The bell is weighty, loud, sonorous with a high pitch, which cut through the darkness. People on the streets turned to look at the sound. As I cycled behind Marco and the bell, listening and watching, I saw the journey as a procession. I felt like an envoy, a messenger, a ghost.

We arrived outside Netil Market, a small, wall enclosed space at the south end of London Fields. I had never been before. We chained our bikes in the street and carried off the bell. Bitchwedge gallery is a market stall, amongst the other stalls, containing chairs and a heater. When we arrived, just before six, most stalls had packed up, or were in the process of doing so. There were few people around, it was dark and quiet, with a feeling of calm ending. After a few moments, Geraldine Ryan, whose gallery it is, announced our performance and we began.

I held the bell, by a blue rope handle, in my right hand. I walked into the centre of the market place and stood still. It was dark, cold and quiet-ish. A few stalls and customers lingered nearby, with remnants of busy-ness. Marco walked towards me, stopped, and looked into my eyes. He drew from his pocket a white monogrammed handkerchief, knelt before me and began to tie it around the bell’s clapper. I grasped the bell in both hands, tilting it forwards and slightly upwards to expose the inside. I had a sense of physical intimacy through this gesture, of the bell as an almost organ-like or gynaecological space, connecting us in this ‘operation.’ As Marco delicately tied on the handkerchief – a process which I could not see – I thought of the dressing of wounds, and the (myth?) of tying a knot in one’s handkerchief in order to remember something, and of the white handkerchief of surrender. When Marco had finished binding the clapper he rose to his feet, again looked into my eyes, then stepped back and stood still.

I began to swing the bell, making a long arc forward, then back, to move the weighty bell through the air. I articulated my whole body through the bell’s movement, bending my knee, pushing my hip, raising and extending my arm to lift the bell high, then letting its weight pull my arm down again, forcing it behind me in a long arc. I repeated this movement again and again rhythmically, forcefully. The bell did not ring. People in the market stopped to watch and listen to the non-sound. Occasionally a gasp of sound broke from the bell, as some less muffled chink of clapper struck at the bell’s body.

As I swung the bell I felt it as a part of my body, both controlled by me and controlling me. I counted the strokes, impelled to the iteration. The bell dragged on my shoulder. I grew tired, and wondered how long I had been ‘ringing,’ when the two minutes would be up, or if Marco would abandon our plan of a ‘sign’ after two minutes, and hold me here longer, silently ringing till I could continue no more and was exhausted. I felt outside of time, like a cipher, a-historical. I was a clock that did not move forward.

After seventy two strokes I glanced to Marco. He was standing motionless, erect, staring straight at me. He had stood this way throughout the silent ringing, a sentry, a guard. A witness to absence, to almost-silence. Watching stillness-in-motion – my arm’s pendulum movement, repeating, my feet rooted to the ground, the un-clanging-clapper flinging against the bell chamber, the market place of drifting, noise, activity, continuation of routine, ending. Marco stepped back, the sign that two minutes had passed, and I allowed my arm to relinquish the force of ‘ringing,’ and become still.

With Geraldine Ryan, after the performance at Bitchwedge Gallery,in Netil Market, all packing up. More about Bitchwedge Gallery here.




Here is the text which I had been pondering prior to the performance - it's an extract from my book 'Body':

Silence Sounds

Last year I decided to listen to the two minutes silence broadcast on Remembrance Sunday on Radio Three. I heard the chimes of Big Ben at eleven am and then a kind of silence ensued – but it was silence with sounds; sounds like breathing, rustling, and faint echoes, as in the interior of a church where people are actively being silent. I assumed this was the silence. Once I had identified the moment of silence, the beginning of it, my experience was then of an ambiguity over what exactly to do; of how to conduct my silence. The radio announcer had stated that there would now be ‘two minutes silence in remembrance of all those who lost their lives in the first and second world war’…or was it in all conflicts..? Without further instructions I wondered should I try to remember, to recall, specific people, historical people and their actions? or a generalized idea of those people? Should I conjure loss, in an abstracted sense, or perhaps in a personalized way? Or should I imagine the times in which historical loss occurred, its scenes, the conflicts out of which it arose? Should I recall people I have known who fought in war, though they survived? Or should I experience the silence, the emptiness, the absence of sound, the pause of activity? is the intended idea that my two minutes of silence should be an awareness of emptiness, loss and absence?

After this silence – this mentally noisy silence, these few moments elongated by super-awareness of noise and movement and expectation - there were guns, then music. I felt then, at the arrival of these ritual noises, that the time had been so short it could not possibly have been two minutes; it must not have been the silence after all, but just a prelude in the programme; and the silence was still to come. So I listened on, waiting carefully for the real silence. Eventually the radio station resumed its music programme, leaving the Remembrance Service; it was clear then that I had indeed heard the silence as I thought originally. I had spent my silence wondering how to do it, what it was or was supposed to be. Silence sounds.

Kate Kotcheff made a wonderful Remembrance Balaclava for her performance at Bitchwedge Gallery. It reminded me of a couple of my 'Balaclava Women' Rizla Drawings. You can see more of my Balaclava Women drawings here, on some of my older posts.

Dishclout, The Human Duster

My 'Dishclout' costume, before and after the performance on Primrose Hill. Photos by Matthew Cowan. And more photos of the procession, by Mat Webber, can be seen on Flickr.

On Hallowe’en, Sunday 31st October 2010, I took part in ‘The Second Annual Disguised Procession.’ It consisted of a group of disguised and costumed artists, musicians and dancers led by Matthew Cowan. The procession began from the top of Primrose Hill at 4.15 pm, moving through the park and nearby streets to end at Cecil Sharp House and the Hallowe’en Music Fair.

I created my costume for the procession entirely from dusters, dish cloths and dirty rags. I processed, and later performed, as 'Dishclout, The Human Duster'. My garment was inspired by my collected pile of old cleaning cloths, and also by the people I’ve seen on the streets dressed in clothing they’ve cobbled together from scraps, rags, plastic bags and other found remnants. These people can be seen on the streets of London, and elsewhere, often ignored, invisible, detoured around – or moved on. They are a locus for our fears of dirt and the abject. Their clothing is an abhorrent and dejected vestment, which manifests and is expressive and absorbent of the deprivations, resources and particularity of the wearer. These ‘dirty people’ make the fissures of society tangible; they and their clothing live in the cracks: for which they are deplored or ignored. I created a persona and costume which took on the role of ‘the dirty,’ in which I literally took on the dirt – confronted it, absorbed it, carried it – I was a vessel for the absorption of dust, filth and distress. My intention was to ‘be the dirty’, but reveal the dirty as the cleanser, as the necessary or inevitable counterpoint to the clean. I appropriated the name ‘Dishclout,’ an old insult for a female servant, as a character who performed a function, a ritual, of accepting dirt, of taking it, revelling in it, of bearing its burden – and of cleansing – a function on behalf of ‘the clean,’ however separate or incomprehensible they might see me as.

I stitched together dozens of yellow dusters, blue jay cloths, white dish cloths and thick white floor cloths to create a dress-come-coat-come-cloak, of draped, striated, folded and layered pieces. Each stitch was a cross, like a suture, a crossing-out, a kiss, or the most basic element in the sewing-mending-making repertoire. I added a head dress, of the same draped cloths, flowing into my shoulders, hanging about my face like a semi-religous or antique costume. A dust mask across my face completed the disguise and held the head dress in place. The garment had arms like wings, wide and flowing, with feathery ends. It was soft, warm and comforting. I thought of the homeless people I’ve seen in their creations, and the rationale of their construction, the living that caused and allowed such garments to come into being, and wondered how the people thought and felt about wearing their clothing.

The procession-proper did not begin until all the disguised participants reached the top of Primrose Hill. But to reach that point we walked from Cecil Sharp House, through the streets and park to the waiting audience. This was an opportunity to inhabit the clean, soft, flowing garment. I walked in time to the ringing of ‘The Bell Man,’ my arm-wings swooshing beside me as I stepped slowly, and enjoyed the anonymity of my entirely concealing costume. I had already been asked ‘Are you a cleaning monster?’ replying ‘No. I am a human duster.’ The procession included a man dressed in a suit covered in bells, even his face; a woman dressed in dead flowers; a trio of female Morris dancers with a gallows held aloft, upon which several Goth-Barbie Dolls were hung; a Knight/Butcher; and a couple in stately Victorian attire with a platter of Black Pudding carried before them...amongst others.

At the top of Primrose Hill is a small round, flat, summit, tarmacced, and edged with muddy puddles and strips of mud, after the recent rain, before the grass begins again and rolls away down the hill. The view looks over all of London, spectacularly laid out before you, with a sense of air and separateness from the city; a perfect place for the Hallowe’en procession to begin. After a couple of performances by other participants of the procession, I began my performance. I walked to the edge of the tarmacced summit and found the first puddle. I dropped to my knees and crawled straight into it. I crawled through it and out the other side. My knees and hands were immediately wet and dirty. I felt the wetness of the dusters and dish cloths as they began to absorb water and dirt, and cling to my body. I noticed the change in temperature as I was exposed to the substances of dirt, the substances close to the ground. Immediately that I began my performance, as I was told later, all the dogs stopped moving and stared at me, then all the people too - wondering what was going on, what was wrong. I crawled a little along the grass, following the circular edge of the summit, and found the next, and deeper, murkier puddle. I realised before plunging in my hands that the dark colour of this puddle would disguise any shit or sharp objects within it; and surely with all these dogs and people there could be all manner of vile content? I placed my hands in, dragged my legs and the wettening costume with me, and squirmed onto my belly, full front into the dirty water. I dragged myself out of the other side, pulling with my hands.

Moving across the grass, I reached an open area of mud, where I dug in my nails and dragged the heavy weight of myself and the soiled costume through the dirt. A man’s boot protruded near my face, and his voice said ‘Lick my filthy boot, you slime.’ I continued. I saw the hill dropping away, and realised the city vista was now to my right. I continued in my circle, glimpsing only feet and catching scraps of sound. I was isolated from the group of the procession and its audience, not knowing if I was watched, unwanted, unseen, ignored or rejected. I was below the level of eyes and engagement, in my own world.

Half way through my performance I began to feel a sense of the weight of dirt, of my dirt, of others’ dirt. The garment was fulfilling its role; it was mopping up, rubbing down, gathering the dust and dirt. And it hurt me, I felt tired and heavy and drained. Yet I also felt a sense of indulgence, of a kind of filth laden ecstasy. I revelled in the freedom to be dirty, to soak it all up. I rolled over, from my front onto my back and onto my front again. I began to enjoy, or if not enjoy, to accept the dirt. My costume flapped and slapped and dragged and clung to me. It was being transformed by the performing process. Its wearing was fulfilling the Dishclout role. I wondered, who am I? What am I underneath? Am I abject? I paused to adjust the head dress, to brush hair and mud from my eye. It was still a dress, and dirty as I was I wanted to look my best. A pair of feet arrived suddenly in view, handing me a small object and saying ‘You dropped this’: my asthma inhaler, secreted in the waistband of my undergarment I had thought. With that gesture I realised – I am a person, not just a garment.

I continued slithering, then more crawling, and found myself at eye level with a crouching photographer. I was aware of the cameras around me, pointing, looking, capturing, and assumed a level of interest and focus upon my actions. It reinforced my sense of separateness: inside the face-covering garment, the layer of grime and weight of wetness, I was hidden, absent perhaps – only the external, the dirt absorbing dress, was present to the world. I completed a circuit of the muddy perimeter of the top of Primrose Hill, inhabiting every movement of the crawl, drag, slither, flap, tangle, dust and clean. I rose to my feet, the garment soiled and heavy with it, draped and clinging to my body, and walked back into the assembled crowd.

The procession then began from Primrose Hill, downwards to Cecil Sharp House. I wanted to whirl and twirl like a dervish, a dusting machine, in my newly transformed dirt-laden-duster-dress. I restrained myself and walked and swished to the clanging of The Bell Man, stepping slowly with the rest of the procession. I wanted also to walk all the way home in my garment, through the city, unknown and unrecognizable, to see how I was seen or unseen. But the wet, cold and weight of the garment drew me to stay at the procession’s destination, Cecil Sharp House, for warmth, hot water and comfort. When I washed I found mud all over the front of my body, right through to my belly, face and finger nails, despite the covering of the costume. I was loath to relinquish the freedom of ‘Dishclout,’ my anonymity and permission to be in the dirt – but felt too the tiredness and strain of bearing the weight of the dirt, and a strong impulse to be clean.




Dishclout, The Human Duster crawled on her hands and knees before slithering on her belly in the puddles and mud around the top of Primrose Hill.


The Bell Man, a performance by Matthew Cowan, took place at the top of Primrose Hill.





The disguised processioners circuited the summit of Primrose Hill, then walked off down the hill in single file.



Photos by Mat Webber