Skittish
Lisa Watts, David Kefford
31 October – 14 December 2013
David Kefford, Intruder, installation view
To initiate ‘Skittish’, live artist Lisa Watts wrote a provocation, or description, concerning her ideas, to certain curators, that then inspired the selection of sculptors with whom she would work. The provocation asked that there be a cross over between Watts’ live art practice and the sculptor’s aesthetics and artistic processes.
At Vane David Kefford has been invited to join Watts in this presentation of the touring exhibition ‘Skittish’. During the opening, and on a regular basis throughout the duration of the exhibition, Watts will visit Vane and perform new, developing, live work in the gallery, the residues of which will remain within the exhibition space. She will work alongside Kefford’s sculptures allowing the exhibition visitors to find the connections between the two artistic practices. The relationship between live and visual art (sculpture in this instance) will be explored and revealed.
Watts is an artist who uses various media, such as performance, video, photography and digital imaging in her art practice, which often involves her own body. Since 1998 she has created an extensive body of work which has toured the UK and internationally, winning awards and commissions. Watts uses the mundane and the abject in her performances and films. Her work plays with images of domesticity and the everyday. It is imbued with a subtle humour: in one of her actions in the performance Snowgum (2013), the artist produces chewing gum from her mouth that she first sticks to the wall, drawing it out to form into a necklace that then shackles her by the neck to the gallery wall.
Kefford’s sculptural work is mutable, temporal, uses un-monumental materials, and is made in connection with, and to, his own body. Kefford liberates and subverts common objects, materials and found images from the everyday environment and transforms these into new sculptural scenarios that suggest elusive, emotional and psychological narratives. Because of the strong physicality of his work as well as the mundanity of his materials, there are strong and evident connections with Watts’ performance work that will be developed during the exhibition. Although the two artists are working in different disciplines, they experiment with the familiar or domestic, the everyday, pushing their chosen materials and processes to their utmost capabilities, transforming them into magical forms and events.
David Kefford, ‘Skittish’, 2013, installation view
David Kefford, ‘Skittish’, 2013, installation view
David Kefford, ‘Skittish’, 2013, installation view
David Kefford, ‘Skittish’, 2013, installation view
‘Skittish’ will also include two of Watts’ existing works: Bad Luck (2006), a film made with artist photographer Alice Maude-Roxby and sound designer Ron Wright that utilises bodily contraptions to create a mysterious narrative, and Snowgum, a performance of magical actions using chewing gum.
This exhibition is the second of three presentations of ‘Skittish’ that develops over eight months. In each of the three exhibitions, a different sculptor exhibits alongside Watts. The tour started at Spacex, Exeter (28 September – 23 November 2013) and following on from Vane the exhibition will tour to The Tetley, Leeds, Easter 2014. The tour will culminate with a symposium at The Tetley in May 2014.
David Kefford, Co-Dependent, 2013, concrete, basketball, duvet and mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo: David Kefford
Lisa Watts, performance in ‘Skittish’, Vane
David Kefford, Lean on You, 2013, garden canes, bed-sheet, plaster and mixed media, 180x90x100cm. Photo: David Kefford
Lisa Watts was born in Crawley, UK, and lives and works in Sheffield, UK. She attended the University of Edinburgh. She showed her first performance, Breadmaking at the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow (1990). Performances include I Never Made It as a Sex Kitten, the Serpentine Gallery, London, the Bluecoat, Liverpool, Hull Time Based Arts, Tramway, Glasgow and Greenroom, Manchester (1993), Grassmonsters, Dublin, Ireland, Hamburg, Germany (1990). Her film, Bun (1997), made with filmmaker Susannah Gent, has been shown in Canada, India, Mexico, Spain, Italy and France. In 1998, Channel 4 Made a short documentary about her digital photographic work, Muscles, made with performance artist Clare Charnley. In 2001, Watts was awarded a Shooting Live Artists award by Arts Council England, the BBC, and Saatchi and Saatchi through which she made Escape Mechanism, a film made collaboratively with experimental photographer Brian Mclave. In 2004, she was commissioned by the National Review of Live Art to make Oh au Naturel shown in Glasgow and Sofia, Bulgaria (2005). www.lisa-watts.co.uk
David Kefford was born in Hitchin, UK, and lives and works in Cambridge, UK. He attended the University of Brighton. Exhibitions include, ‘The Hair of the Dog’, Block 336, ‘New Foragers’, Collyer Bristow, London (2012), ‘One Minute Volume 5’, De Anza Experimental Film, Cupertino, California (2011), ‘Party Animal’, SUGAR, New York (2010), ‘Performing Presence’, The National Centre for Contemporary Art, St Petersburg (2010), ‘SALE’, The Royal Standard, Liverpool (2009), ‘One Thing Against Another’, Aspex, Portsmouth, ‘ArtFutures 08’, Bloomberg Space, London (2008), ‘The Balance of Being’, national solo touring exhibition (2005). His work is held in a number of public and private collections. He is co-founder and director of artist-run project space, Aid & Abet, Cambridge. www.davidkefford.com
Skittish is supported by Arts Council England and Sheffield Hallam University.
Lisa Watts live performance schedule during ‘Skittish’
Thursday 31 October 12-5pm / Friday 1 November 12-3pm
Wednesday 13 November / Thursday 14 November / Friday 15 November / Friday 29 November 12-5pm
Wednesday 4 December / Thursday 5 December / Friday 6 December 12-5pm
Thursday 12 December / Friday 13 December 12-5pm
Take a video tour of the exhibition
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