Like a Woman
To live is to move; how we move embodies our past and creates our future. The consideration of these ideas, through the use of performance, photography, drawing and video-documentation, is a continuing strand in my practice. We have enormous capacity to move freely, physically and mentally, to fully extend ourselves. I am interested in how this capacity may be expressed and constrained over a lifetime.
‘You throw like a girl’ was hurled as a real insult when I was growing up. Throwing a ball requires an understanding of the need for flexible full extension of the arm, confident appraisal of destination, and a definitive follow through. This understanding and action culminates in a powerful movement, one which girls were thought, at one time, to be unable to achieve.
Feminist critique of the bodily constraints placed on women and girls has now emerged into the mainstream. But perhaps the most striking change in how we think, almost forty years on, is that old dichotomies are being challenged; there are few concepts that haven’t been explored together, all at once and side by side. This possibility for increased fluidity, which I once used as a clinician, has drawn me to combine methods and materials in my arts practice that can open, transform, and remain unfinished; that have the potential to explore the both, the and, and the altogether.
In each live performance of ‘Like a Woman’ I choose between a lacrosse ball and a ball of wool with a hook. Through a series of improvised movements I make new acquaintance with the balls as I let go of their histories and find new delight in each of their qualities. Here, full extension is also release. The digital layering of the images captured in previous performances, allows me to show my movement with both balls, together, all at once, both/and, as if in dance.
Performances daily at 11.45 in the dark space on the third floor. Also at 5.30 and 7.00 during the private view
