the wait/weight of emotion: a new performance and installation work

in States and Senses
Kudos Gallery, Paddington, 30 april – 18 may

The context of this work is our massively underachieving state of (inter)personal connection, and the heart-rending neglect of our environment. For this work I’ve been exploring the ways women and nature are connected and neglected, asking what is the wait/weight of emotion in the expression of that (dis)connection?

In this performance I engage the cultural breath associated with waiting and love, to explore the foundations and layering of social and personal dissonance, disappearance and imbalance. Combining a traditional and recognisably gendered method of inquiry, the solitary act of plucking of petals, with a scientific method of enquiry, measurement, I explore how much the internalisation/externalisation of emotion weighs on our states and senses, and I aim to bring awareness to a(nother) sense of self and other. I have selected the blue chrysanthemum for its culturally diverse meanings from love, respect and the spiritual, to death and grief. Growing up, it was also the abundant Autumn flower in our family garden that caused me breathing problems.

My interdisciplinary practice is scaffolded by Luce Irigaray’s luminary perspective of renaissance, autonomy and other, and by engagement with work on the less visible space of such poetically mindful thinkers, makers and practices as Bachelard, Deleuze & Guattari, Perec, Dickinson, H. Valamanesh, Bourgeois, the Tibetan Middle Way and the yogic practice of khumbaka. This supports my performative investigation of shared and urgent human issues of space, emotion and a sense of self in an increasingly breathless and anxious society. Through my practice I speculate that the potential for transformative beginnings and wonder arises through perceiving breathing space, unhinging the self from dominant discourse and opening to a different dynamic: an in(de)finite state between being and becoming for self and other.

The public will also be invited to engage and to weigh up their feelings. Images to follow.