Photo by Anne Bean 
Photo by Chris Bishop 
Photo by Chris Bishop 
Photo by Chris Bishop 
Photo by Chris Bishop | Hayward Annual (1979) |
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I was invited to participate in 1979 Hayward Annual. I asked the artist Peter Davey to present 15 ‘ANXTIONS’ together. These included one in which, painted gold with honey on our heads, Peter delivered an academic lecture on Beuys as shaman whilst I unpicked a fluffy toy rabbit, laying it’s stuffing and furry material out as an exhibit. I then wrote “Art or Archive” and put these words and the rabbit bits in an electric blender. Other actions included a clock set with a 5 minute alarm placed on an electric cooking ring as a race between melting and alarmed time and drawings of shadows of a spinning bicycle wheel whilst reading words from the Tibetan book of the dead and placing these also in the electric blender. I finally attempted to read fragments rescued from the blender. The poster for this was a collaborative painting and the title was arbitrarily plucked from a Bengali newspaper of the day and, to this day, remains unknown to us. A letter I wrote to Helen Chadwick curator of Hayward Annual 1979: Dear Helen, This is a brief description of the piece I intend doing for the Hayward Annual. I will be doing it with one other person, Peter Davey and it will be 15 x 5 minute performances. As things stand at present the following are the proposed ideas or titles of each part: 1) A WRESTLING MATCH 2) NEXT STOP LUMASVILLE (A HORROR PLAY) 3) INTIMATE CONFESSIONS 4) A LECTURE ON JOSEPH BEUYS 5) A PERFECTLY EXECUTED DANCE FROM AFRICA 6) MAN INTO WOLF (A VOICE/MUSIC PIECE) 7) MR SPIRE AND MRS SPEER (A DOCUMENTION OF A JOURNEY BASED ON BECKETT’S ‘MERCIER AND CAMIER’ 8) ‘THE GREEN ROBE’ (A RESTRUCTURING OF MATISSE’S PAINTING) 9) A POLISHED CABARET PIECE 10) THE COMEDIAN 11) A CONVERSATION ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE PIECE 12) AN UNKNOWN POETESS READING HER POETRY 13) 5 TOTALLY UNPREPARED MINUTES 14) THOUGHTS ON AN INDIAN SUMMER EVENING (THE MEMORY OF A CONVERSATION) 15) HYPNOTISING THE AUDIENCE INTO HAVING HAD A GOOD TIME Back to Anxtions click here |