wings of desire – secret cinema
angels and east germans patrolled shepherds bush green last night as secret cinema brought wim wenders’ wings of desire to life in the elegantly dilapidated pavilion cinema. the hi-light for me was the trapeze and rope artists, so neatly synced with on-screen action, throwing graceful shadows onto peeling paint.
magic skeletons?
last minute gigs r fun. especially when they’re at cargo, you find out the same day, unrehearsed and no-one comes. we thrashed out a blinding set though. and i got to play with my new setup… mam-fort may soon be extinct but the skeleton will stand.
alice alice alice
took me a while (since march) to get these done but its some of my favourite work – alice in wonderland @ pentameters theatre; hypercolourful fantastical play/installation.
trapeze practise
i actually prefer these images to the ones i used in my home/performance project, it aint a performance so i couldn’t use em. i think its a better portrait of zoe, especially the details of hands and feet, gripping on ferociously. plus the fluorescent lighting in the practice room gives a lovely green tinge to the brick walls.
home/performance – zoe atkinson
An old friend and flatmate, I have lived with Zoë for two years. She is a headstrong and proud woman who loves her friends and love to gossip. With a history of art, having graduated from a fine art degree three years ago she occasionally paints and produces conceptual collages.
Her main creative output is in ariel acrobatics, particularly trapeze. She spends all of her spare cash on lessons and practice time and is constantly trying out new techniques and going over routines in her head. Despite all this, she is quite lazy. It is fascinating that she can spend two days lying around in her room doing nothing then get up and go to a class and perform wonderfully graceful, elegant acrobatics then come home and eat a kebab and go to bed. Its such a wonderful contrast that I don’t think anyone would guess at if they met her in her everyday life.
Zoë lives in a flat in a council estate in Highbury, a homely environment where she can relax. She plays the unruly teenager of the house as opposed to me, the mum and Joe the grandad. She is often to be found slouched on the sofa watching TV, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.
home/performance – richard evans
A new friend of mine, we met through the arts collective, which bind us all as friends. We got on well and I have since started to produce music with him. He has quite a serious expression, which doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s going on in his head – he has a very playful outlook, obsessed with experimental music and obscure art. His clothes also defy his serious demeanor – he wears very bright colours, especially socks.
Despite being a long time recording artist, these images are of his first ever live gig. Being extremely nervous he clipped a yellow card holding his lyrics onto the mic stand, doubling as a shield for his face; a strange way of presenting himself to the audience.
He lives with his flatmates, although a solitary character he interacts with them with comfortable ease, having recently moved out from living with his ex-girlfriend of 10 years. The present period can be seen as something of a renaissance in his life, he is learning to have fun and play again, losing the role of boyfriend which he assumed almost too seriously.
home/performance – alice old
I met Alice as a neighbor, and soon my life was centered around our houses and Hampstead village. She was quite young at the time and – even more so than now lost in a fantasy world, in and out of touch with reality and obsessed with dreams.
Alice isn’t a born performer, she played Alice in Wonderland at age 5 on the same stage as this (her mother Leonie owns the theatre) this production is a reprisal of 15 year old part. The character is perfectly suited to her, more than sharing the same name – Alice (in wonderland) is lost in a dreamlike world, an allegory for the real Alice’s life.
Her home is a quiet residential enclave far up into North London where she lives with friends and the landlord, its a contrast to the elegant squalor of her previous flat in Hampstead which she shared messily with a posse of teenage girls. The domesticity of the place has a calming influence on her creativity and it feels like she doesn’t quite fit in.
home/performance – george henriques
George was always part of my circle of friends, having become recently closer, working with me curating art exhibitions. He can be a quiet person, only interested in talking when something really interests him. However when his ideas and thoughts materialise its hard to stop them rolling out of his head. He is softly spoken yet extremely physically strong, expert in kung fu. I photograph him as a sculptor, which I see as the dominant part of his creative output, as opposed to his bass playing alter ego, in the heavy metal band ‘Blood Meridian’.
I chose to include a visual artist to go with the performance artists as I feel that George projects his character and mindset through the sculpture and in exhibiting them presents them as a performance of ideas. Likewise as the art has its own character and life, observers interact and react to it similarly to the audience at a musical or theatre performance.
George lives in Hackney Wick, a typically creative area with two other visual artists and a cat in a warehouse space. He has a small bedroom and a sculpture studio built into the space. The rooms reflect his scruffy yet peaceful self, elegantly decaying and very silent.
details leftover
another leftovers on the stage performance in pentameters hampstead, raising money for the forthcoming alice in wonderland installation based theatre performance art type show, starring amongst others… me! as the mad march hare. which means i get to spend 10 hours a week in rehearsal acting like a loon. pretty average stuff for me, its my natural demeanour.
anyhow, i decided to focus on the little things in this performance and sit in one place for the whole thing, bit of a ’single perspective’ type thing…
