30 August 2022 – 15 January 2023
Out of the Margins examines the shifts in institutional engagement with live art, highlighting key moments that raised this cultural practice from underground and marginalised to an acknowledged art form. The archival exhibition includes photographic documentation of my work The Daily Hayley, which was performed from 15-30 September 2001 at Matt’s Gallery, London.
This week: Pillows, 2020 - present
Pillows is a piece of writing I started in April 2020 after being treated for Covid-19 at home in March of the same year. It is the name I gave my flat, which at the time felt like a sanctuary, a place of refuge, protection and care, that I imagined extending out into society in recognition of the right of every person to rest their head in safety and peace and to belong to the place they choose to sleep.
www.mattflix.com
This week: Crisis Cabaret, 2013.
In March 2013 I performed a chapter from my first novella Common live onstage at the Barbican, London.
Common was written as Self-Appointed Artist-in-Residence in the City of London during the financial crisis of 2011. In this performance I read from the chapter Crisis Cabaret, while the specially formed dance group Loose Change perform a collectively developed routine with penny shields by Cat Phillipps, originally made for her interactive art-work Small Change, which took place on the anti-cuts demo March for the Alternative in 2011. My dress is a wearable painting by Lisa Milroy and I am accompanied by Steve Beresford on the piano.
Loose Change ensemble: Bea Bonafini, Caroline Smith, Cristina Planas, Eleanor Morgan, Freya Bramble-Carter, Helena Hunter, Jean Eisenman, Juntae TJ Hwang, Katie Lerman, Lara Mackenzie-Lee, Mimi Winsor, Naomi Fitzsimmons, Nicholai Nicholai, Rachael House, Sally O’Reilly and Xtina Lamb.
www.mattflix.com
Gravity, Gluts, Pennies, Pillows and Ray, a 5-week MattFlix retrospective screening of some of my video works.
This week: Cafe Carbon by The Gluts 2009/2013.
The Gluts are Gina Birch, Kaffe Matthews and Hayley Newman. We formed in 2009 to go to the Copenhagen Climate Summit (Cop15) with our song cycle Café Carbon – a menu of 16 songs about global food production, growing your own food, food waste, water shortage and excess, modernity and extinct animals.
Performing with serious absurdism on trains, in cafes and on the Cop15 march, The Gluts offered a musical meal; short and pithy starters, filling main courses, sweet desserts and thirst-quenching drinks, which people could choose from and then consume with their eyes and ears.
Week 1: Gravity, Gluts, Pennies, Pillows and Ray, a 5-week on MattFlix retrospective screening of some of my video works. This week features Soundgaze from 1999.
Soundgaze was one of the most complex in a series of sound works I developed and performed at music venues, festivals, galleries and independent spaces in the 90s.
In the performance I use two veterinary weighing scales interfaced with a laptop running the multimedia programme Director. Using the weight of objects to produce sound, individual items placed on the scales triggered up to 300 samples, creating a real-time soundtrack to my performance. Sheets of paper placed on the scales activated sounds of writing, tearing and scrunching. The changing weight of a glass being filled with water triggered samples of liquid in differing states: boiling, dripping or gushing. A pile of old shoes sang a song. A bee buzzed before hiding inside a teapot, its hum muted by the lid.
