| Tract Live A rt |
|
|||||||||
| Site specific live art and performance in and around Penzance, Cornwall, over three weekends. Summer 2006 | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| Information on this site will be updated as part of the Tract Live Art Programme | ||||||||||
Amanda
Couch
Amanda Couch's performance will quietly recall archaeological
artefacts.
Neo Sakkharic: A New Sugar Age
Saturday 23 September
Binding Refining
Dissolving Body Parts, Edinburgh.
…
a character, a diminutive figure…not of this time…she is a
traveller; navigating boundaries between civilized and savage, woman and
child, place and time
…I wonder if she is me?...Who is ‘me’, anyway?
…She plays out scenarios and repeats actions…She is very busy;
she has much to do…But is it play or is it labour?
…She watches magic flirt with the physical, drawn in by the sensual,
sexual and spiritual side of materials
…She works in front of a camera, but I don’t think she knows
that she is being watched…
Amanda Couch
(b.1975 Swindon, Wiltshire, UK) studied at Norwich School of Art (1995-98)
and Royal College of Art, London (2003-05).
She received The Jerwood Drawing Prize (2005), Basil H. Alkazzi Travelling
Scholarship to New York (2004), Robert Fleming Award (2001). She was recently
performed Refining, Binding, Dissolving, ‘Body Parts’ Festival
of Live Art, Society of Scottish Artists, Royal Scottish Academy (2006).
Solo shows include: The Canada Diaries, University of Calgary (2004),
Paper Drapery, Hospitalfield House (2001), Papier Imposteur, Château
de Sacy, (2000). Group exhibitions include: Can You Eat It, Stroud House
Gallery (2006), Second Year Itch Café Gallery Projects (2005),
A Work of Art in Itself, Bury Art Gallery (2002), Society of Scottish
Artists Open, Royal Scottish Academy (2000). Her moving image work was
screened at INPORT-International Video-Performance Art Festival, Tallinn
(2005) and VAD-Video and Digital Arts International Festival, Girona (2005).
She lives and works in London and Lambourn, Berkshire.
www.amandacouch.co.uk
Under a white awning at Penlee House, Amanda went to sit in a white Edwardian dress, with a teapot and cup and saucer next to her as if about to drink mid-afternoon tea.
In fact, in a weird inversion of the tea-ritual she set about mechanically and determinedly to devour the crockery itself. Made out of sugar to look like fine white china, it shattered in her teeth, broken shards landing inelegantly in her lap, until there was nothing left.
Although shorter than most of the other performances, Amanda’s contribution was strongly symbolic, given that drinking tea has always been a symbol of civilised living and empire, and Amanda herself looked like a model in one of the paintings by Stanhope Forbes inside Penlee House. In this sense then it could be viewed as a rule-breaking act of metaphorical patricide: a refined, genteel woman turned chimpanzee
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Photography
by Steve Tanner