A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About
@hortus_silvam
1994 Group Show
Performance; documentation; writing
Super-8mm black and white film, silent
Performance: 4 hours
Camera: Sasha Koura
Sponsorship: Paul Mitchell
Disembodied took place in an old warehouse in South London. The room is filled with the decay and detritus of abandonment awaiting development; the sun shines in brightly from the open doorway into an otherwise dark space.
At the point where proximity and distance lie
giving life to the stark white foam, encroaching
bearing its sweet aroma beyond
enticing you in through the open doorway.
Passing through transience
engaging with timelessness.
You are confronted by a familiar action that is out of context; where time is compressed and all the life in between is elsewhere. A doorway from the bright sunshine outside leads you into this bare dust-filled room, which is otherwise quite dark. A past of activity reiterates, as it waits for new life in refurbishment.
A figure in the far corner transfixes the image of a painting, washing her hair over a single bowl of water. The weathered grit and mould of the room's disuse become buoyant with aromatic foam, spilling a presence into absence.
The artist performs the act of washing her hair continuously for 4 hours. The white aroma of foam gently creeping away from the impromptu bowl on the floor. Visitors eventually have to step over the foam’s creep, and they gather to watch from seated positions on the floor around her. Then she left, leaving behind a space quietly transformed by her presence.
Location: The Tannery, Bermondsey, London
A performance work from the series Trace, made in the 1990s, documented on film and further explored through the transfer to analogue and digital media.
scar, trauma, memory, water
© Sophie Standford