Hello again,
I have been back In Manchester for a month and I'm wrapped up in Free For Arts Festivities, I have performed at the PR launch at Common to great appraisal, and performed at Matt and Phreds, doing a cover of Portishead, on the Ukulele, and a song which was basically me applying to Matt and Phreds, as I spent money on a harp, so need a job really.
I'm doing a toy instrument orchestra on Thursday at Gesampt, with help from all sorts of folk, and I'm playing the closing party on Friday at Centro, doing all this is grand, and got OXJAM interested, so I have some gigs lined up with them.
I was supposed to be living in a dilapidated palace on whitworth park, but the landlord, change his mind about leasing his house, so I'm now living in a different huge place nearer fallowfield, and I'm like cinderella in the attic; I often forget I'm not living in whitworth park so got off the bus early and thought why not soak up some culture and escape the freshers.
I went to the Whitworth a while back to see all the print work and the new exhibitions, some great work a piece that made me want to paint again was..... Micheal Porter he usually does all his work based upon a wood near him in Derbyshire, and its so textured, he has unique was of controlling materials to invent new textures, that from far away portray a dark wilderness, up close there like your looking in the undergrowth, pretty incredible.
All the prints were lovely, and graphics I really liked how dynamic George Bellows work was .
The exhibition which shone for me was, Roberta Breitmore a performance archive, by The artist Lynn Hershman. What I found amazing was the complete histories the evidence, how this new alter ego could have been a real person, I thought how there were aspects of photography, and letters, could have just been a photography project, but the artist being clever making us consider the idea that she was living new life was ammusing thought provoking and I guess quite troubling, I like the dark humour that it contained but I presume it disturbed all sorts of people.
ROBERTA BREITMORE
Performance in real life, using real materials, experience and real time
San Francisco, San Diego, Italy.
"Besides bending reality to create ROBERTA BREITMORE, Hershman has more significantly demolished the barriers separating theater, literature, painting, photography and conceptualism. This collage technique is not unlike filmmaker Robert Altman's multiple character/multiple viewpoint treatment in nashville. Hershman rents a room, uses the mails and classified ads as they are ordinarily used. This creative demolition may be the most promising movement in the arts today"
Robert Atkins, Bay Guardian, October 13, 1978
Forms of Documentation: artifacts, diaries, surveillance photos, ads, handwriting analysis, credit, letters, psychiatric reports.
ROBERTA BREITMORE was, for 9 years a private performance of a simulated person. In an era or alternatives, she became an objectified alternative personality. Roberta's first live action was to place an ad in a local newspaper advertising for a roommate. People who answered the ad became participants in her adventure . As she became part of their reality, they became part of her fiction.
Crazy!
