Hat Stand, Feminist Library performance

'Hat Stand' was a live performance I made in December 2019 at the Feminist Library, for their exhibition and celebration event, prior to moving their collection to a new building.  

I created the piece site-specifically with an over-sized tubular steel hat stand which was part of their furniture, and incorporated written material I had created in my residency Touch Wood, describing my interactions with plants.  I approached the large hat stand and removed my scarf, coat, and cardigan.  I then climbed into the hat stand and began to bind my hair to its hooks until I was firmly stuck.  I then read pages from my writing on attaching to nature, sometimes held in my mouth, scattering pages/leaves on the floor.  I then engaged in a rocking, pulling tussle with the hatstand, precariously, manoeuvring it with my head which was still attached to the steel structure by my hair until I was able, with difficulty, to free myself from it. I then replaced my clothes.

Thank you to PB

Photos by E Trezzi, edited GB

Touch Wood 2 & 3 - Poetry Walk and Evening Amphitheatre performances

Touch Wood (2) - live performance, as part of 'Poetry Walk' at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, an event organised by Hari Byles.  With PB, inc on harmonica.

Touch Wood (3) - live performance in the outdoor amphitheatre, evening, at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve.

Touch Wood (2):

A perambulatory performance, around the Nature Reserve, sequencing micro-locations within the site that I had been manoeuvring in previously.  Re-performing these manoeuvres to journey around the site, with PB on harmonica.  Snips of hair posted through the chicken wire fence.  Foot hovered over the low stone wall.  Shoeless foot and shoe-in-hand as I swing the open gate.  Heliotropic lilac wool to criss-cross bind my leg up a tree.  A sudden dash with PB to the amphitheatre.  Stepping onto the log with harmonica from PB, and balancing-crouching to tie my head to the thorn bush.  

Touch Wood (3):

A seated performance, with reading from my book 'Touch Wood', skipping from one passage to another within it, and snipping of hair while I read.  Hair, ultimately, covering face, obscuring my face and muffling sound.  Snippets of hair falling into the book, and retained in pages.

Photos by Hari Byles (some edited GB)

Touch Wood - Kupola performance

'Touch Wood (1)'

Live performance at Phytology/Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, for Kupola event, 2019

With PB

Part of my residency at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve in 2019-20

Screenshots/stills from film by Michael Smythe

Touch Wood Residency

In 2019 - 2020 I was Artist in Residence at Phytology/Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, London - my project became 'Touch Wood'.

I made artwork and experiments in the Writer's Hut, herb garden and nature garden.  I produced movement experiments,  5 live public performances, an artist's book and 3 large scale billboards.

I was invited and supported by Hari Byles and Michael Smythe.  

In 'Touch Wood' I devised a series of ‘manoeuvres’  - finding ways to connect myself, my body, to the plants and trees of the Nature Reserve – whilst thinking about ritual, personal history, our bodily adaptations/expressions, and how that enables us to connect, or not, with nature, and in turn finding myself/ourselves there.  Often using my hair, or wool or parts of my body to physically connect myself to the plants and trees, or to hover or move between them.  I would then find language to describe the manoeuvres, which became distilled into poetry, an artists’ book, and hand-painted full-size billboards.  I re-worked these texts and physical manoeuvres to become live public performances, within the Nature Reserve and elsewhere, with the final one transplanted to the Feminist Library where I attached myself by my hair to a hatstand rather than a tree.  The manoeuvres and surrounding works employed absurdity, endurance, arduousness, inversion, futility - delicacy, intricacy and intimacy – ritual, repetition, connection – communication, description and instruction becoming discovery and expression - to explore the feeling of our bodies fitting and not fitting with nature, and the rituals that can connect us to it.

 

TOUCH WOOD

LOOK UP AND TURN

FACE TO SUN AND 

BALANCE ON ONE

FOOT

STAY

 

Gail Burton is manoeuvring with the trees, plants and soil in the Nature Reserve, touching and not-touching, on one foot and two. Finding points of contact, fragility, entry and repulsion in a series of experimental movements, repetitions and devised encounters, sometimes simple, sometimes intricate and absurd.  These solitary performances become writing, slowly.  The billboard is the first extract from the book of manoeuvres.

'Touch Wood' performance 1. Stills edited by GB from film documentation by MS

'Touch Wood' performance 2. Photo HB

Pages from 'Touch Wood' hand-painted artists' book

Hand-painted full size billboards.  Photos MS

'Hat Stand' performance, Feminist Library. Photo Trezzi

Twine, Twiddle, Twine and Spik or Spec

'Twine, Twiddle, Twine' and 'Spik or Spec'

Four performances over three days at Acme Open Studios

Robinson Road Open Studios 2024

25^th-27^th October, London, 2024

 

Twine Twiddle Twine

And

Spik or Spec

Twine Twiddle Twine

I am sitting on a high stool in the entrance/ante-chamber of my studio, with the door closed - the audience are in the corridor outside and I open the door to begin.  I sit on the stool, and remove my shoe, and rhythmically tap the soles together.  I lick my finger-tip each time I tap, then touch the sole. I drop my shoe, stand, and untie my hair - I twine my hair and pull myself up by my head.  I balance on one foot and begin to hop and rock, tapping my heel as I manoeuvre half behind the door, half out of sight. I'm singing 'Twine Twiddle Twine'.

 

Video of Twine, Twiddle, Twine at Twine, Twiddle, Twine video on Youtube

Spik or Spec:

I am behind a translucent curtain beyond the entrance way of my studio, the main door is open to the corridor where the audience are, outside the studio.  I emerge from the curtain and walk to the doorway.  I bob down in the doorway and let my hair cover my face, and blow through the curtain of hair and poke my finger through to make a hook which I catch with my other finger.  I stand up, bent over, and begin to twine my hair through my toes, until it is stuck fast.  I then manoeuvre my body onto the ground, retaining the hair hooked onto my foot.  I rock and turn until I am on my back. I lift my legs in the air, with difficulty.  I take cotton string from my trousers and loop and throw it to catch onto my toe, and around my hair-rope.  I wind and bind my legs until the thread runs smoothly between my toes and I can hold the end of the string and manoeuvre my legs.  I'm singing 'Spik or spec, and the hook comes down'.  I rock my torso until I am able to get my legs on the floor still caught in the string, and having flipped over I am able to drag my leg behind me as I crawl-shuffle back towards the translucent curtain and through it out of sight.

Link to video of  Spik or Spec on Youtube