The period of lockdowns, were for many people the moment the clocks stopped*

It was an unexpected pause that changed everyones life. It gave me a boost of energy and the experimentation and research that followed resulted in eighteen months of intensive and explosive workshops. This cumulated in a series of segments, sequences and phrases that were small sketch pieces that could be played and performed in different settings. I was awarded a small arts council grant, it was enough to be able to pay performers and dancers to engage in a series of experimental workshops under the umbrella title Walk Stand Still and from that grew an enormous range of works that exist somewhere between performance art, dance and theatre, what I call performance based-actions.

There were a number of works that came out of these sessions that were more or less complete pieces, and others that were small episodes and moments. There were twenty three sessions each one recorded and with something like eighty small phrases and segments.

During these sessions a number of pieces began to take shape, these include, Intersection-interaction a piece designed originally for the crossways junctions of New York, Bedlam, Audience, Ghosting, Performance, Chair, Mirror Mirror and Command-control-shift. There is also a work designed specifically for galleries and museums called Between Walls.

The series Between Walls were specifically aimed at gallery and museum and non theatrical space. These performance based-actions could be presented in various setting and with a cohort of performers that could be drawn from the community. This is not community art, this is art that engages the community in the process of creativity and allows them to author and be responsible for their own actions.

*For the emergency services, transport and delivery workers, cleaners, refuge collectors and many more working class people we realised what essential work actually is. The health services around the world did the best to keep us safe.

Mirror Mirror

Isolation, loneliness, fear, social distance, mental health and wellbeing have become something many have experienced in one way or another and in particular during the stress of lockdowns, where these conditions have been amplified. These are some of the themes that have been explored or touched on in the developing sessions that began in March 2020.

My influences are endless and include artists John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Pina Bausch, Anne Teresa Keersmaeker, Samuel Beckett, Theatre of Mistakes, Station House Opera and the artist Gary Stevens. The list could go on and on and on…….

Bedlam (section one) 2020

Bedlam is a new work proposal under development

Projections is made performed and recorded onsite with the gallery fixtures and fittings. Using the normal tools of the museum or gallery, including spirit levels, ladders and tables.

The workshops

Working with Ash McNaughton and Lise Boucon as been essential and a joy, developing a series of works under the umbrella title - Walk Stand Still. My process is playful, uncertain, tentative and I am sure annoying. But both Ash and Lise were fantastic bringing energy and curiosity, enabling us to play, take ideas and pursue them wherever they went. Paul Cheneour, the Jazz flutist/composer has been part of this project from the beginning and the British Composer John Woolrich has been key, an important colleague and influential in all aspects of this process from the very beginning.