Performances are a relatively new part of my practice. I first performed around seven or eight years ago with my collaborative partner Fiona Stirling, and I find making simple performances a useful tool for my practice as a whole and to this research in particular. The ability for research to be developed and made during a performance of one iteration and within time and budget constraints is key. This refers, in some ways, to my early painting practice and the how the use of quick marks and simple print/lettering allowed me a way of communicating quickly and directly. The current version of these constraints is around time and budget and these Scratch performances are determined by the circumstances of their making.
Collaboratively, Fiona and I had worked with our children several times but, due to time and space constraints (and informed by Courtney Kessel’s 2016 performance, In-balance) I wanted to experiment with making performances at home with my own two daughters. They agreed to take part again.
In the Scratch performance I use a bonnet that I've used in a series of collaborative painting actions that, with Fiona, we performed in selected public spaces.
This performance with my children took place in a domestic setting, in the back room of our house.
“You've used the place you spend your most time and you've used the place you work in, where you do your work and where you do your housework. And where you … raise your kids.” (HRG Scratch Performance Discussion 2023)
I cleared the room and placed two stools in the middle of the space, these two stools were borrowed from my mother, because I didn't have anything appropriate.
We enter the space and put our outfits on to delineate the start of the performance. The bonnet gives me a sense of anonymity, but also acts as a way of making me focus because of the way that the sides of the hat cut out a lot visually of what's going on around me – a bit like a horse with blinkers on, the bonnet both visually and physically oppresses. My children are wearing various other disguises also to protect their anonymity. DRG is wearing a balaclava that she made for performance with the Young Everyman Theatre. HRG is wearing a headscarf, and sunglasses.
“I liked as well that we could hide our identity because I feel like I don't know about you. But when before we started it, I was a bit nervous to do the performance because I was a bit like, oh, gosh, I feel like having anonymity makes you more relatable, because it doesn't mean you haven't put certain personality on it and as well, you've not gender you've not put an age, you’ve not put anything else.” (DRG 2023)
This performance starts by us putting on these costumes, On the stools, there are a set of playing cards which have been split. And both children have been given a task. The task itself isn't very important, because it just needs to be an activity for the children to do. My children and I had many discussions on what the activity should be; I had wanted to echo the Time Space and Motherhood action of throwing paint or throwing food echoing a performance by Stephen Sheehan, Finland does not exist (2016), which we were all in the audience for and participants in. Sheehan’s performance involved the audience throwing mushrooms to register their enjoyment or lack of, of the performance. Both physical actions it seemed to me, portrayed the mess and chaos of a domestic environment and where perfect for this piece. The children did not want to do this.
“Yeah, because I felt it. I felt like it was a bit too. Toddler-y…it's very babyish, but also, it's like, that's, it's like us going wah wah wah wah wah And I feel like it's more nuanced than that. It's not just us throwing food … because then that makes us look like t***s” (DRG 2023)
DRG and HRG's agency in this was important both in terms of their inclusion and for me to relinquish some control over the way the piece was pointing in order for this to be a truly collaborative work. While I designed the scratch performance there was a limit to what they were happy to do and things that they wanted to have input into - like what they were wearing and what the action they would be performing would consist of “You wanted us to do this…we have to have a say in how it’s done”. (HRG 2023) They needed to have a task which required concentration, communication (with each other) and focus. They settled on a simple gathering of playing cards in the same suit, and they will be doing this activity whilst I am reading out the abstract for this research project.
This could be any piece of writing about the work as I wanted to produce this initial “scratch” performance so that I can try and understand what it is about this work that needs to be done as a performance rather than any other art form. I could have made a painting; I could have made an installation. Performance seems a straightforward way of exploring issues, exploring ideas. It’s quite concise – I can get the children involved if they only have ten minutes available. I can make work on my own or with a colleague. I can make work in a domestic or public space, my lack of time and space (necessary outcomes of parenthood), need not hinder my impetus to make the works. I can photograph or film the performances, or document them through conversation or writing. Performance brings with it an inherent flexibility and instantaneousness that fits in with my lack of time, space, and funds.
I decided to do a scratch performance as I had heard the term at a local theatre, and I understood it to be the first reading of a play or a way of trying out new material; a way of getting feedback on material and of developing the piece. I felt that it could be similar to a sketch that you might do for a painting, or a way of working out of an idea. As I come from a 2D Visual Art background, this seemed a good way for me to test out the water with this performance.
In Social Works Shannon Jackson discusses, among other things, the relationship between visual art/artists and performance art and the “increasingly complex field of experimentation in art performance” (Jackson, 2011: online) and examines why increasing numbers of visual artist are choosing to work in social practice and performative work. This shift potentially offers artists using performance a greater degree of control over their work. She writes: “Visual artist have begun to refuse the static object conventions of visual art, exploring the durational, embodied, social and extended spatiality of theatrical forms.” (Jackson 2011)
The piece of writing I selected for this performance was the abstract for my research project. I start reading out my piece – the children start their tasks, and what soon became apparent is that it was quite difficult for me to continue to give a clear performance or a clear reading. As part of the children’s activities, they are sometimes required to ask each other for cards to make up their set, they need to communicate with each other. This action relates to a domestic setting where I’m trying to do a task or an activity, and the children are doing their tasks or their activities – replicating my experience of motherhood in the domestic space. What ensued was a performance that I struggled to concentrate on and that didn’t sound very clear, or very natural, as HRG noted in our discussion after the performance.
“The video (of our performance) actually reminds me of… a ransom video? …not as in you were like, scared. But when you’re trying to speak in a ransom video, you’ve got something completely different going on in your mind. And… that’s your life though – trying to work with kids.” (HRG 2023)
Her observation echoes Lisa Baraitsers:
“Though the relation between maternity and interruption has been commented on at a more global level in terms of the ways having children can interrupt a woman’s career or life-plan (Orenstein 2000:33), there has been little attention paid to the psychological effects of being constantly interrupted on a moment-by-moment basis by small children” (Baraitser 2011:67)
And both children discussed how the set-up of the performance (with me stood in-between them) reflected a long-standing element in our relationships:
“I think you had to have separation between the two [of us] as well…you’re standing in the middle, because if your stood on the end …we’ll be bickering. “(DRG)
When I had finished reading my content, the performance was over. We took off our costumes and left the room.
We produced this performance before my children left home, they both left home on the same weekend in September 2023, I felt it was important to make the work whilst they were still at home as I was trying to document the process of them leaving home. When I first started negotiating art and motherhood in my own practice, I looked at Mary Kelly’s important Post-Partum Document (1973-1979) in which she documents, in detail, the first few years of her son's life. This work was ground-breaking and led the way in terms of explorations and documentation of motherhood and consists of, amongst other objects, diary entries, drawings, nappy liners, items of clothing and recorded conversations up until “the crucial moment of the child’s entry into an extra familial process of socialisation, i.e. nursery school” (Kelly 1983). As my children grew, the economic and time issues overtook the physical aspects of child rearing. Now as my children were leaving home and geographically moving away from me, this physical aspect of Kelly’s work became important again. I felt that this performance, in part, could be part of the process of me, documenting my children leaving home in the same way and become in some way a transposition of Post-Partum Document.
After the performance we reflected on what we had done. Some interesting things came to light from not only the performance of the piece but from the discussion with my children where they were invited to discuss their reflections in the same way they had been encouraged to collaborate in the design of the performance beforehand.
“The fact that you've had to do it in your own house with limited resources, the way that you've lent the chairs off your mum … there’s nothing perfect about it ... we're bickering halfway through... that is literally what your project is.” (HRG 2023)
Scratch Performance culminates and draws together all the elements I have been working with: Motherhood, time and activism. It uses collaboration and performance to explore “one way of characterising the “performative turn” in art practice is to foreground its fundamental interest in the nature of sociality”. (Jackson 2011) Scratch Performance marks a more deliberate turn towards performance, both out of necessity (economic and time-related) and a sense of agency; and, in that way, utilises elements of 1:1 scale practice away from more conventional performer/audience practice and into something useful for individual artists limited by resources.
