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

Leaning Down to Violet - St Margaret's performance

Leaning Down to Violet, a performance at St Margaret's House, Bethnal Green, 2019

I performed 'Leaning Down to Violet', a performance with my book Touch Wood and a microphone with cable, using and reading my text Leaning Down to Violet.

Some pages of Leaning Down to Violet (not all):

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

'Walking as Artistic Practice'

 Walking as Artistic Practice: Crawling

A page on Ellen Mueller's research website about Crawling and Walking as art - featuring my Crawl performance.  

Ellen Mueller:  Ellen Mueller's book: 'Walking as Artistic Practice'

Walk On exhibition and book

 Walk On

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

Blake and Ololon on Resonance FM

Today at 2.30pm 'Blake and Ololon', a sound piece by Marco and me, will be broadcast on 'Wavelength', William English's programme on Resonance FM.  This is a new edit of the sound piece which accompanied our performance 'Blake and Ololon' on 26th November 2012. (Please see earlier posts for details of the performace and exhibition it was part of).

Blake and Ololon performance

On Monday 26th November 2012 Marco and I did a performance called 'Blake and Ololon', accompanied by our Blake and Ololon sound piece, (a shorter edit of which will be broadcast on Resonance FM on Friday 21st December).   The performance was part of the exhibition 'Illuminations', an exhibition of small illuminated works and performance inspired by William Blake and curated by Helen Elwes and Stephen Micalef, which took place in the Crypt of the Church of St George the Martyr (see previous posts for more details).

All photos by Joe Burton, except where indicated 

 

Photo (below) by Calum F. Kerr