The Arrival of Sculpture

2023, performance with single-channel video projection, 17 minutes

The performance incorporates archival footage from 1971, documenting the installation of Barbara Hepworth’s Two Forms in a regional museum in northern England. As the footage is projected onto the wall of the performance space, I read a text aloud while simultaneously rolling, shuffling and lying down in the space, in a manner that partly echo the movements of the sculpture itself. The work challenges the use of archival images to canonise art history, while simultaneously undermining the ‘subjective authority’ of the voice-over by introducing gaps and hesitations into the spoken language.