Conundrum

Jude Kerr has created a gigantic site-specific performance event which aims to disorientate the viewer through a system of movements. Images of 291 Gallery are projected onto the multiple surfaces of a 4m square mirror box in the centre of the space. The two virtually identical performers place and replace the mirrors and slides, turning the box inside out and inside out again, repeating, suggesting and sometimes avoiding the space inside the box. The space occupied by the viewer within the gallery is at times clarified and at other times confused. Real, projected and reflected space creates a visual conundrum with the classical and formal arrangement of the Gallery. 

Jude Kerr is currently undertaking her M.Phil/Ph.D in Devised Performance at Wimbledon School of Art. Her research is primarily born out of an obsessive fascination with the painting by Velasquez titled ‘Las Meninas’ (1656). A series of themes that underpin the recurrent interest in the painting and present aesthetic trends in art and culture, are being explored. Alongside this, Jude has cited that the traits of formalism (as defined by Allan Kaprow in 1974) run parallel to these themes. To juxtapose this pragmatic approach to her work, a metaphoric and visceral image is arrived at. This highlights a relationship between chaos and order and in turn reflects the artist’s response towards the fragility of our own existence.

FORMALISM

There are many paradoxical ideas surrounding formalism. In the second paragraph of his essay ‘Formalism: Flogging a Dead Horse’, Allan Kaprow unravels a quintessential trait of formalism through the use of two examples. Firstly the mediaeval definition of God as,

“...a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere”

as quoted by Pascal or Descartes. He places this example next to Aristotle’s philosophy that the physical world is “measurable and reasonable” that it is “apprehensible, not by the senses, but by intelligence and intuition”. Kaprow writes:

“Together the two examples evoke a reality that is apparently knowable yet increasingly intangible the more one knows....the form becomes more and more regular, yet less and less clear.”

Performers Jude Kerr

Ness Mann

Usherette Danielle Taylor

Production Jo Manser

Crew Damien Williamson

Lucian Mansel

Photography Stratt Mastoris

Graphics Graziano Milano

Credits:

291 Gallery, Research Centre/Wimbledon College of Art, The Plunge Club,

Anne Albright, Frank Brake, Lorraine Blackwell, Atlantics Hairstylists, Barkston Plastics.