Since 2014, I have collaborated with Christine Devaney (Dance Artist)and Luke Sutherland (Musician). Our joint projects have been presented at Dance Base – the National Centre for Dance (Edinburgh), the National Museum of Scotland, and St Margarets House as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. Decay into Stone will be created as an atmospheric, meditative and durational performance installation, the ideas for which have evolved from an exploration of the connections between archaeology, art and the body. (This was due to take place in Aprill 2020 at Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway. This has been postponed until Oct 2020, or indeed until 2021, due to the ongoing pandemic.)
New archaeological thinking looks at the role and participation of the dead body in the Neolithic era. The decay of the material body is absorbed by the stones of the burial chamber. The stones are ‘skinned’ in the body’s decay and the whole chamber is thought of as a living thing, as the stones become the person whose body has decayed upon its surface, and the person likewise becomes stone. This idea and process reminded me of how live artists, dancers and musicians, ‘decay’ into one another; a dance, a sound, an object, given from one and absorbed by the other, transforming each other and continuing to flow and grow with each other. The body acts as the material surface - a canvas, a mould - from which a new ‘skin’ is created using paint, wax, plaster, paper. This, in turn, becomes a new corporeal form to respond to, re-shape and transform.
New archaeological thinking looks at the role and participation of the dead body in the Neolithic era. The decay of the material body is absorbed by the stones of the burial chamber. The stones are ‘skinned’ in the body’s decay and the whole chamber is thought of as a living thing, as the stones become the person whose body has decayed upon its surface, and the person likewise becomes stone. This idea and process reminded me of how live artists, dancers and musicians, ‘decay’ into one another; a dance, a sound, an object, given from one and absorbed by the other, transforming each other and continuing to flow and grow with each other. The body acts as the material surface - a canvas, a mould - from which a new ‘skin’ is created using paint, wax, plaster, paper. This, in turn, becomes a new corporeal form to respond to, re-shape and transform.
Materials: latex, wood, wax, pigment.
Object Size :10cmx50cm
Materials: latex, wood, wax, pigment, nylon.
Size: 5cmx50cm
