SAY IT

SAY IT

Wednesday 13 February 2008

SAY IT

Am off to throw rotten tomatoes at a wall in a gallery in North London....

Climate for Change is organised by Mark Hammond.




Circle Community Projects are hosting the project in their 40, 000 sq ft space, opposite Camden Art Centre (in the old Alan Day Mercedes Dealership building).
(photo Paul Sakoilsky)
Did the deed and had a good chat with Paul Sakoilsky where inevitably Hermann Nitsch a (favourite subject of his) came up in the discussion. He also made some kind suggestions about tomato hurling techniques.

The Tomato Conspiracy

Score
1 female performer
1 female “tomato hoody” costume
1 box of ripe tomatoes
3 union jack darts
6 red buckets
shredded newspaper
coffee grounds
human hair
worms from compost





Dartington Residency

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In April 2007 I spent nearly four weeks around Dartington College responding to the site and producing new medium format photo works. The entire time was imbued with the prickling coldness created by the fact that my curious, fierce, dreadfully posh and much loved Aunt was dying. She died on the last day of the Residency in her home town for most of her life, Chichester.

This led me to develop a new performance work inspired by her life and my grief at Rules and Regs in Southampton.

In March 2008 I will be presenting a new work at Dartington College developing further concepts dealing with the nature of funerals and other ways of letting go of loved ones. I will also be showing the photographs I made last April as light boxes in the Gallery.




Press release:

Quiet Bells Sprung.
An exhibition by Deej Fabyc


Curated by Lindsay Hughes


13 – 21 March 2008.

Preview: Thursday 13 March 6pm – 8pm.
Performance 20 March 1 pm at The Gallery forecourt

For more than twenty years Deej Fabyc, has worked solo and collectively using live art/performance combined with digital media, drawing, sculpture and photography, exhibiting widely in Europe and United States. More recently she has exhibited at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. Having spent a number of years in Australia and now based in London, Fabyc is director and founder of artist run space Elastic Residence, Whitechapel, London.

Continuing the artist’s residency programme at The Gallery, Dartington College of Arts, Fabyc spent four weeks on the site exploring her working processes in April 2007. Work produced will form her first solo photographic exhibition at The Gallery. Fabyc has utilised the landscape as a site for reflection, where she will present new medium format photographs, made in the grounds of Dartington Estate, looking at myths of the woods and family relations.

Leaves Fall Yet They Return
A ceremony with Deej Fabyc in collaboration with some local heroes

A performance will take place at the end of the exhibition, which has been developed in response to the fact that a family member died whilst she was at the residency. Fabyc is asking the public to come forward with personal stories of their bereavement from which she will make medals created to have personal significance to each receiver.

A ceremony in collaboration with some local heroes.
Have you lost a child, a brother or sister, parent, close friend or lover?
Artist Deej Fabyc would like to give you a medal for your experience of loss. She would interview you for half an hour in confidence and develop a personalised medal for you that recognises the important memories you have of the loved one. You would need to be prepared to come to an intimate award ceremony at the Gallery at Dartington college of Arts on the 20th of March at 1pm in order to receive your award. It is suggested that you may need to have been bereaved for more than a year, but that is your decision.

The Medals

Medal In Memory of John
Jack Russell Terrier
Brown Paisley on his Chair
A crucifix
A Pipe
A Bottle or Two
The Expression: "Said The Actress to the Bishop"


Medal In Memory of Dave RJ

A Book
a Globe
Musical Notations
a Football
The Expression: " Equal Rights for All"

Medal in Memory of Jean

A Star Pincushion
A Silver Salt Cellar
A Quill Pen for Poetry
A Cameo Broach
Some Toy Animal Eyes
The Expression " Give us a Butchers"

Medal in Memory of Ursula

A car
toys and games
writing a quill pen
a glass raised
yellow Kitchen table and xw golf 
Travel
Amnesty Logo
The Expression: "Look I'm Doing the Ton!!"

Medal in Memory of Margaret and Harry

Black and Gold
Poetry quills
Sea and Fishing- a life ring
Pears 
Pine Cones
Flowers
The Bible
Baking
Wild Wallpaper






The Gallery, Dartington Hall Estate.Totnes. TQ9 6EJ. Tel: 44(0) 1803 862224

Niki de Saint Phalle... says it like it is

Sometimes it is so strange that things come up when they do. I have been given the generous opportunity to work with Artsadmin this year to develop new work using the "shooting paintings" of Niki de Saint Phalle as starting point for a series of live works. Then I get an email letting me know that the Tate Liverpool, is presenting a retrospective of her work. So I cleared a space in my life to get up to see the show last Thursday. Last year I was reintroduced to Niki de Saint Phalle's work by an ex student from Newport School of Art Media and Design in Wales - Sofia Wilén.

I had seen "Daddy" before on video but it was great to sit through the whole thing in the gallery. I wonder if Kubrick had seen the film when he made Eyes Wide Shut ?

The aspect of Nikki de Saint Phalle’s work that calls out strongly to me is her strident, emphatic process of telling like it is (or was). She rushes into the dark side of human relations and pulls at the underlying evil and love. She is not a "demonic provocateur" as Jonathan Jones calls her in the Guardian. Her "shooting paintings" started as a representation of her anger at a lover. She threw darts at his portrait in the form of St Sebastian and progressed to a more generalised anger at church and state and in particular colonial imperialism. She was making clear links between incest on a personal level and institutionalised infantalisation of women and non-western peoples. An angry woman is prone to becoming a pariah and there are few examples of women who have successfully expressed this anger in Modern or Contemporary Art.

To be emphatic, strident and overt are strategies most prone to disaster in contemporary arts practice. This kind of work has always been the stuff that gets me going... SAY IT LIKE IT IS!!!

The work above was part of an exhibition I had at 200 Gertrude st Gallery, Melbourne in 1994. I asked Sydney CID to shoot at the work in their underground firing range in Surry Hills. The work which was made of collage and drawing applied to an old formica table top, was part of a series of works called Eat me Babe
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Eyes Looking at You
a performance in development


above: costume designs for Eyes Looking at You


Score
1 male camera operator/collaborator
1 male “art gallery black” semi formal costume
1 box of ripe tomatoes
1 set of plastic tie cuffs
1 ring hook attached to gallery wall
1 female performer
1 female “tomato hoody” costume
20 audience members signed up earlier in the evening
20 costumes made from polyurethane busts with long black robes beneath.
Audience of 50+

Duration: five minutes plus up to one hour mingling with the evening audience prior to commencement.

Method:

Camera operator-collaborator Kim Fielding mingles with the crowd acting as a hyperactive paparazzi. Up to twenty audience members are signed up to wear the costumes above and given an instruction sheet - Deej Fabyc wearing a 'tomato hoodie' costume walks into the foyer area of the space and gives tomatoes to the costumed audience members. They are then organised into a semi circle. Fabyc stands in front of them and lies on the floor in sacfificial pose raising the expectation that the tomatoes will be thrown at her. Kim rushes in and takes numerous intimate close ups of Fabyc's prone figure. Fabyc's arm suddenly shoots out and grabs the camera. Raising herself up, she wrestles with Fielding having placed the camera to one side. One of the costumed audience/participants comes forward and safeguards the camera.

Meanwhile Fabyc succeeds in zip-tying Fielding to a hook on the wall attaching a pig mask to his face. Fabyc stands back and recites a list of world leaders. As each name is called out a tomato is hurled at Fielding. This continues until the tomatoes are finished. At which point Fielding is cut free and dragged away. Finis






This page is for updates about my current or recent residencies

The problem of writing proposals, is always how to transcribe the vision that tends to come to me complete. How to present the image that is already so alive and multidimensional in my mind into two dimensional words. Success in communicating the idea depends on really making others see the potential of the image.