In perFORMa Alexander Costello, William Mackrell and Florence Peake will be performing or coordinating performances in the gallery for the evening of the private view. The result will culminate in a show of objects, interventions and sculpture which will remain exhibited in the space for the duration of the show.
Alongside this Ana Genovés will provide an object to be read by Sarah Jones as a score. The work will appear at the opening and remain in situ for the course of the exhibition whilst Sarah will attend to it, visiting and revisiting the work, for a period of time following the opening.
Referencing Bruce Nauman, Marina Abramović and the language of art - with a nod to RoseLee Goldberg’s biennial event. perFORMa will challenge the tradition of performance as a vehicle for artists to move away from materiality, and raise questions on the commercial gallery as platform for this discipline. As the resulting physical objects will remain in the gallery and will not be moved or curated after the event, perFORMa will raise questions of hierarchy - whether the objects have a value outside of the performance - and how much the knowledge of the original event affects the reading of the work autonomously.
Alexander Costello is a sculptor, video and live artist. His ideas and work are generated through an interest in challenging and exposing the everyday absurdity of perceived normality; the simultaneous pursuit of the infinite and finite; the origin and location of idea; and the exploration of processes that are in themselves the truth in the work, often undermined by a resulting outcome. Misinterpretation and miscommunication of action and language, and an impulse to consistently re-consider form and composition, support and bring balance to endeavours.
Sarah Jones enjoys listening to things, chancing on noises produced when objects are given a voice. Her work draws on legacies of minimalism and literal theatricality, embracing and ramping this up as a part of picture making.
Ana Genovés makes forms that echo the props of social order; the shapes and objects through which we conduct and arrange our civil space. These conventions often default to a neat geometry to suggest an appearance of control, to mitigate the threat of a subsidence into disorder, into the unknown, or the unfathomable - the collective fear of the OTHER.
William Mackrell’s practice shifts across sculpture, video and performance. He uses materials and mediums that allow him to articulate an idea in the most clear and immediate means possible. He attempts to question his language as an unravelling process, and this journey itself becomes the content of the work.
Florence Peake is a London based artist and choreographer creating work of an interdisciplinary nature, independently and in collaboration with other artists since 1995. Her work has been exhibited and performed nationally and internationally, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Prague, Sweden and Latvia.