Gesture (A Symposium and Performance)
Gesture Performance.
Performed at St John’s College Auditorium, Oxford in 2024.
The piece was my largest collaboration to date , improvised and yet structured to echo a choir and response in a church. The improvisation is on the theme of Gesture and flows seamlessly between the performers and features a running commentary from Matthew Collings, responding with ideas to what he sees taking place and feeding into the work placing it historically and politically.
The performance is live and central to a three day symposium and investigation on the theme of “Gesture.” The symposium was proposed by myself and Dr Jennifer Johnson to open up a forum of discussion between the different disciplines to discuss Gesture and its importance.
This investigation involved many great speakers from different areas of the Arts and literature: and focused upon the fields of Painting, Performance, Music, Dance and literature. The contributors included former collaborators together with many others. For more information on the fascinating abstracts and further writing on this please look at the Symposium website
https://www.gestureconference.com/
The whole performance is viewable on this platform.
The idea for the central performance was for it to be completely improvisatory, but like other work is formed over a long period and over many conversations, especially this time with Dr Jennifer Johnson (who convened the conference) and Lavinia Cascone whom I collaborate with. The idea was to create a hybrid lecture/performance with Commentary, balanced between all the different performers to reflect the themes within the conference, which would encompasses my own collaborative performance practice and explore and reveal the complex aspects and layers exploring “Gesture”. The crucial part of this particular performance was the involvement of Matthew Collings, to explore the connections between Gesture and Abstract painting. I have long been an admirer of Matthew’s work and over the lockdown period became particularly fascinated in how he brought aspects of Art History alive through his drawings and paintings. We agreed on a format where improvisation and action would form and evolve, and he would provide a commentary on what he saw, then linking it with gestural painting of the past and with his own ideas and thoughts. The performance took place at a time of great political tension and felt charged due to this. The political aspects of Gesture and Abstraction were also explored within the performance.
I concentrated on using largely just the colour Ultramarine Blue, as to solely concentrate my own and the viewers mind upon the Gesture rather than colour responses. The Blue has become a theme in other performances over the years, mainly inspired to its link with Tibetan Buddhism and its association with purity and calm.
The musical thread which leads through the performance is Christopher Redgate (Oboe) whom I have now worked with closely over a period of many years. The Oboe is the first instrument I remember hearing and responding to as a child. I remember hearing the physicality and immense effort in breathing upon hearing (Albinoni Oboe pieces). Dr Emmanuel Spinelli uses Childrens toys which reinforces the notion of play and Indigo (Emmanuel and Portia’s child) walks into the performance, a dimension of childhood and Gesture and interrupting the adults play. It was a great joy to work again with Maggie Nicols whose work I so admire and resonate with, providing words and inventiveness and further layering to the piece. Here she mentions Art as an idealogical framework. Art having a real freedom as opposed to political unfreedom.
Recently my work has been reflecting the small intimate gestures of care and so I also wanted to incorporate elements of this into the performance with Dancer and movement artist Lavinia Cascone. Here the gestures are touch based and holding.
The artist Ryan Trecartin once said when asked about collaboration in an interview “Collaboration opens up a landscape of possibilities”. I hope you enjoy this live and collaborative Landscape of Gestures.
The Whole performance is available to watch here.
April 2024