Jamie Lewis Hadley, Analogue to a Blunt Trauma, Spill Festival London photo Guido Mencari |
Jamie Lewis Hadley, Analogue to a Blunt Trauma
Waiting at the far end of a cavernous white warehouse space feels like being on a film set. There are lights and cameras anticipating action and a white sheet-covered couch framed by a corridor of pillars. At the far end a door opens, a man enters and emerging in silhouette he walks purposefully down the centre of the room with what seems to be a gun in his hand. As he passes each pillar, fluorescent tubes blink on. This beginning of Jamie Lewis Hadley’s performance is an intentional set up, referencing cinema tropes and creating an expectation of theatrical artifice. However, from here we witness a more intimate yet perfunctory act, as collaborator Dr Belinda Fenty proficiently extracts and fills a medical grade blood bag with Hadley’s blood.
The casual demeanor with which Hadley lies across the couch and the friendly exchanges between the two belie the more serious nature of the act. I think of blood and loss, this reflection amplified by the subsequent proceeding violent act, in which Hadley takes aim and shoots the hanging blood bag multiple times. Real gun, real membrane and a rapid release of real blood; the metaphor is not lost. The moment is shortly echoed on a blood-stained sheet that had been dragged across the floor and hitched as a screen. Here the action is replayed in high definition slow motion. The effect is at once jolting and seductive. Jamie Lewis Hadley’s work is provocative and intelligent, its precise delivery relies on blurring boundaries while challenging the politics behind consumption of shocking, ‘beautiful’ trauma.
Julia Bardsley, Medea_Dark/Room
Julia Bardsley, Medea_Dark/Room, Spill Festival, London photo Pari Naderi |
Martin O’Brien, Last(ing)
Martin O’Brien, Last(ing), Spill Festival London photo Guido Mencari |
I am aware that O’Brien’s practice revolves around “physical endurance and hardship” informed by his chronic cystic fibrosis. What follows is a series of procedures and tasks that not only serve as metaphorical illustrations of symptoms but also convey a sense of a body objectified within a medical regime. The artist’s work is unforgiving, messy and raw, never pretending to be otherwise. Within moments of fragility there is strength. I am held by the final action, reflecting the journey of a body purged. Martin stands encased in a prison of barbed wire, his head covered in a lung shaped latex hood. The green fluid into which he had previously plunged forms clumps on his body hair. As I witness the labour of his breathing and excruciating gasps for air, one thing shines through—the remnants of his golden lungs, a defiant signal of the artist’s reclamation of his body.
SPILL Festival of Performance 2013, producer Pacitti Company, London, 3-14 April; spillfestival.com/
Sydney based performer and interdisciplinary artist Julie Vulcan’s attendance at SPILL 2013 was supported by the Australia Council Theatre Board’s Cultural Leadership Program and the NSW government through Arts NSW.
RealTime issue #115 June-July 2013 pg. 10
© Julie Vulcan; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]