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Celebration for Institutional Consumption
Please go to Text section for further information.
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I was contracted to work in the Hille furniture factory at Haverhill in Suffolk in 1970.This was at a time when the production facilities were being enlarged necessitating reorganisation of the factory. I chose to work in what I thought were the least attractive conditions, the metal polishing room. There were roughly 6 to 8 working stations in the workshop. My intention was to break into communication with the workers and then to extend my contacts across the factory floor. I did manage
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Performance duration: App 2 hours each day for 2 weeks. I lay in a bath of black water in the bathroom of Gallery House for approximately 2 hours each day for two weeks. In the wash basin and on a ledge next to the bath I laid out some offal. During the two weeks the offal decayed, flies laying eggs and maggots hatching out to feed. There was a low light in the bathroom so it was difficult to see exactly what was in there. The door was left ajar. The only sign of movement was
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Please go to the Text section for further documentation. You Know It Makes Sense (With reference to Allegations Made by the Irish Times Against the British Army in Ulster Concerning Torture), 1972 with Everelde Berry, Deborah Brisley, Janet Deuters and Michael Melluish. Photographer: Aleric Aldred In March 1972, the then British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, claimed to have banned notorious torture methods which were later condemned by the European Court of
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For one week, the artist dressed in soiled clothes and makeup and lay on a bed at Gallery House.
Gallery House was an unrenovated space in London next to the Goethe Institute that had an 18-month existence in the early 1970s.
Mitchell Algus 2011 -
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Stuart Brisley made these three works during 1981, although they concern events from three different dates during the 1970s. They were conceived as works in their own right and are not simply documentations of performances. Brisley is suspicious of documentation; he feels that it can invest an action with an inaccurate, sometimes mythical status. He is anxious however to have some record which amplifies the unique status of the brief existence of an event and gives it more than temporary form.
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Click here to watch the video Click here to listen to Stuart Brisley in conversation with Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art & Performance about his work.7 October 2011 The film Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes Free) was conceived after the performance 'And For Today... Nothing' which took place at Gallery House Goethe Institute in London in 1972. The words Arbeit Macht Frei were wrought in iron and placed on or above
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The performance 10 Days happened during Brisley‘s DAAD artist exchange to Berlin. During this performance, which took place between 21 to 31 December 1973, Brisley offered the food he would usually consume to his audience, essentially living without any source of food for the whole 10-day duration of the performance. Brisley recreated the performance at the Acme Gallery in London between 21 and 31 December
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First used newspapers in 1969 as part of the process of thinking about the 'everyday'. Bath Works, Berlin 1974 continues this exploration further - the head as a sensory receptacle is masked by the day's interpretation of the news. Like an ideological imperative applied to the head. It was made in private - the idea being that the photograph would become the work in public. The photographer was a friend and collaborator, Leslie Haslam, also a long term resident in
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Moments of Decision/Indecision
Moments of Decision /Indecision Teatra Studio, Palac Kultury I Nauki, Warsaw, 1975. I was offered a DAAD fellowship to live and work in West Berlin for a year in 1973/74. The first thing I did was to go to Warsaw where I met Józef Szajna, the Director of Teatra Studio. I was offered an opportunity to make a work at the studio in 1975. It was subsequently titled Moments of Decision/ Indecision. The work was situated in a large room half
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Artist Project Peterlee / History Within Living Memory
Click here for the link to Durham County Council/Peterlee Project Click here for information on Peterlee In 1975, Artist Placement Group approached new towns to set up the terms for artists to propose projects. The Development Corporation of Peterlee New Town responded and in 1976, Stuart Brisley was appointed. The project contained three distinct parts: ▪ to develop an ongoing process of collecting and disseminating information
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Performance duration: 3 days This work took place over three days on the quayside of lake Constance in Bregenz. I made five wooden frames the size of my body with outstretched arms. Clear polythene was stretched across two of the frames to prevent paint leaking on to the quay. Black nylon cord was tied to form a cross shape on each frame. The frames were laid out in a line stretching towards the lake. I placed my body under the cord under he first frame, then stretched to express the
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Survival in Alien Circumstances
Performance duration: 14 days Digging a hole in which to make a place to live for two weeks, then leaving the evidence as an installation as echo. Choice of site was fortuitous as the rubble from the Second World War was deposited there, eventually forming the base for a park. In digging I came across all manner of detritus, including fractured parts of human bones, verified by a doctor friend visiting the site. Digging was to be continued for two weeks. As the hole progressed,
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The action took place as part of the Vienna Performance Festival in 1978. I made 13 actions each lasting one hour i.e hours 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23. It took place in the evening and through the night. The space was open during the 24 hours. In the intermediate hours 2, 4, 6, etc the space was open for viewing. A path was used dissecting the space to the wall opposite. Black and white pigment was laid out in two piles at the centre of the room and a taut black
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At the Acme Gallery in London, Brisley performed 180 Hours Work for Two People (1978). He took both roles: “B”, a vocal bureaucrat inhabiting the upstairs part of the gallery, carefully preserving his urine and excrement and hanging it in a hole in the floor, above “A” who lives downstairs, a man-off-the-street as active as “B” was vocal, but who says nothing. When “A” “disappeared”, “B” began playing his
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Between the Wall and the Floor
In this performance, in an abandoned warehouse in Dublin, Brisley suspended from the ceiling a dire construction fashioned out of chairs, paint and bags of sand. Moving along a network of cables spanning the space, the artist repeatedly attempted to engage this intractable object.
Mitchell Algus 2011 -
Une Nouvelle Oeuvre pour la Consommation Institutionel
3 day and night continuous performance. Nomadic condition. Triangular structure for sleeping in - transported by the figure in and around the entrance to the Musee d'art Moderne... Communications with the homeless who spent the nights in the covered section of the entrance among the columns.Little or no contact with the visitors to the exhibition during the day. Stuart Brisley 2012 For this performance Brisley constructed a small shelter in which he could sleep and that he could carry
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