Hidden Sign
Hidden Sign
A performance work with the assistance of a musician
Two live eels, one cooked eel, stuff and strapped sea gull, stove enamelled mild steel plinth with mirror, a ceramic dish, length of black cloth, cream tarpaulin floor covering, chalk drawn square on floor 56 x 56 cm, black wood box, slide projector, Quad 405 amp, two l¼” Revox tape decks, two KEF professional speakers, two ¼” synthesiser composed tapes, two theatre profile spotlights one with a blue gel, two standardised wood chairs.
Sound composed and played by John Foxx
This work was a live presentation. Performed at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1980.
The work was content-based and directly related to the construction sculpture of the same title Hidden Sign. This work attempted to place the persona of the “human understood” (the main character/s of the Construction Sculptures) into a live relationship with an audience – a kind of tableau vivant. It was preformed in a particular space with a beginning and an end and with a narrative, but it was not presented in a formal linear mode. Two performers – the artist and a musician – the underlining theme was related to issues of global pollution.
Exhibition provenance
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
