'Crude Care', Florence Peake, Performance, 15 minutes, at the Box, Plymouth.
Vital transmission of performance by the artist herself - although she has released the 'script' so that anyone can perform it. The script is made up of snippets of dialogue from the care workers she collaborated with. Florence is looking at the human extraction of care, like the extraction of oil from the earth - taking - to the point of 'no care left'. There is video footage of burying bodies in clay and then extracting them, pulling them out - with a lot of care - care with the process, with the clay, with the body. What is it to care? to genuinely care? or to have the demand to care beyond your limits - to give more than you've got?
I went to see 'Body Politics' - an exhibition of Carolee Schneeman at he Barbican, London - She has been a huge inspiration to me and my practice, it was amazing to see her work in the flesh. I was surprised to discover that Carolee called herself a painter, first and foremost - and that everything else (performance, film, installation, theatre) was painting in space, with bodies.
'I'm a painter. I'm still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.'
Some of her old work: Meat Joy (1964), Fuzes (1964-67), Interior Scroll (1967), Up to and Including Her Limits (1976), Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera (1963) - was the most impactful to be with. Work I'd read about and be influenced or inspired by: and yet to sit with it, to feel it's transmission, it's affect or impact in my body was powerful.
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