Here's Your Fucking Sculpture

A durational performance followed by a short lip-sync to Sparklehorse's song 'Pig'.

Found materials, tape, body, makeup, mirror and easel, stool and plinth, audio track.

Estimated duration: one hour.

Performed at 'The Devils Doorframe' exhibition, ECA.

From October 2023

Here's Your Fucking Sculpture

Photography Credits: Eva Magdic Govedarica

This piece was in direct response to percieved hostility from ECA tutors and course-structure towards drag performance & its associated creations as a 'valid' art form.

I was incredibly angry at the lack of support for performance work and the pervading sense of apathy where non-commercial and DIY practices were concerned. It was like they were waiting for us to get real and cast off our childish notions of art for and by the people - in this case for and by working class queer communities.

After being prompted for the umpteenth time that -I really should look into sculpture as a way to immortalise (and legitamise) my drag performances- I just decided to put myself in an exhibition. I had an easel to hold my mirror and a plinth to sit on while I applied it & I did my best to keep a straight face and ignore punters watching me. Afterwards I joined the evenings lineup of performance work & lipsynced to Pig by Sparklehorse - a song I had been using for other drag work at the time.

The result was ok - quite awkward, subdued and turned the audience into voyeurs for a little while. I didn't like how overtly performative everything felt. My drag work is usually emotional & I feel physically transformed into this other creature capable of publicly addressing eroticism & trauma and gender with humour. With this the motivation felt cold & stale & unfair and the lack of authenticity (even though I was authentically pissed off) left a cringe taste in the work & its documentation.

On reflection the cringe also came from the slight misdirection of my anger - my tutors were actually very nice people for the most part, it was the corrupt art/university commercial/art systems that they upheld and represented that deserved wrath. That still do deserve dismantling, and this performance came nowhere close to the gravity of the situation ---- hence its categorisation as not my best work.