¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?
On the 10th December we are holding a night of live art, film, music and spoken word at The Actress and Bishop from 7pm.
Join us in this evening of mostly un-Christmas related performances, our aim is to kick back and enjoy a range of fabulous live art, curated like an overdressed Christmas Tree, spilling into each other in the most fantastical ways.
Artist line up: Adrian Giddings, Jonathan Charles Graney, Byron Hare, Sophie Hedderwick, Yvonne Lake, Sarah Fortes Mayer, A. N. Onymous, Laura Parrot, Bioni Samp, Rich Stokes, Collective Unconscious, Ed Wakefield, Strange Ways.
Edward Wakefield – Alastair
Ed Wakefield is a collage maniac and occasional performance artist based in the West Midlands. Collaborating nationally and internationally with the creme de la creme of collage artists he is carving out a unique niche in the world. Hold on tight!
C 4 L | The Collabradors | Art Finder
Rich Stokes – Candyfloss and Razorblades
Rich Aquila Stokes is a singer, songwriter, actor, comedian and writer. He won Best Short Story at last year’s Birmingham Book Festival and has recorded two EPs and two albums with his band Aquila, the latest of which is available for free download from Aquila Loves You. His writing, blog and podcasts can be found here.
Laura Parrott – Lamkester Merrin
I’m an Essex-born, Birmingham based artist, currently in the second year of my BA in Fine Art at the Birmingham School of Art. Despite working across a spectrum of disciplines, I favor sculpture and photography, and more recently performance. I work around the idea of the supernatural and the uncanny, and the psychological and social impact that these ideas have on us as human beings. My work lends itself to audience participation, and aims to create something which is both beautiful and disconcerting.
Sarah Fortes Mayer – Lace
Sarah Fortes Mayer is a fine art student studying for her MA at BIAD, Birmingham. Part of her practice is performance. This year Sarah’s work explores old age and what it is like to be marginalised by society. Her performance ‘Lace” investigates the problems of ageing and loosing one’s identity.
Byron Hare
Byron Hare are a creative collective born in a smoke filled living room. They work within music, performance and video to explore the idea of taking ‘the band’ out of music.
Yvonne Lake – ‘Early Learning’
Lake is an artist interested in the fragmented nature of personal identity and the fluidity of roles; the selves we keep hidden and the images of self that we project, particularly as a technologically developed society.
Adrian Giddings – Improvisation 0001-DES
Adrian Giddings works in any available media. At The Hoxton Square Gallery he staged a performance-free puppet show, suggested the removal of a public fountain and temporarily annexed parks worldwide. Currently collaborating with Lee Chaos as temp0rary to push the possibilities of improvised A/V performance they have also worked with some of Britains leading live artists to stage challenging and thought-provoking installations. Previous work with Richard Gallon has been purchased for Tate’s book art collection and with Fiat Lux he pioneered lightwriting with live video. He lives and works in London and the internet.
Collective Unconscious – Dry-humping into Nazarath
Chalkhurst, Battista, Bijani
Coupled in loneliness.
An extra cellular matrix,
A duet of tongues
Flxing love raffles
And intimate tombolae,
for Herods sick ejaculate.
Conjoined, they dry humped into Nazarath on an interuterotopic death python.
We are together, lest no man tear us apart.
A. N. Onymous
A waif and stray is someone who has no home? What is a home? A home can be a roof over one’s head, a source of food and warmth, somewhere to clean yourself. I believe that it is a place of safety, of comfort, somewhere we can feel loved. I intend to make a home for waifs and strays.
When researching the term ‘waifs and strays’, I found this quotation; “Emma was always bringing home waifs and strays and giving them a bed for the night.”
I would like to share my bed with ‘waifs and strays’.
Bioni Samp – Hive Synthesis Hibernation
Set in the midst of winter on the shortest, darkest day of the year, called Winter Solstice. It is celebrated as the return of the sun
or the start of its return…
Hive Synthesis Hibernation performance attempts to create a symbiotic frequency relationship, like those between pollination and nectar exchanges, or between beekeeper and bees.
Jonathan Charles Graney – At First We Observe And Then We Remember
Exploring the emotional and spiritual connections of art of which the artist believes are lost, forgotten, disconnected through time.
The Artist asks the audience to surrender their perception of art as they know- as an industry and a commodity, to abandon the gallery and to travel to a landscape where creativity s considered ‘spirit’… at first we observe and then remember.
Strange Ways – Christmess Crackers
Strange Ways are Helen Grundy, Harmeet Chagger Khan and Elena Cassidy-Smith. They make art that is playful, provocative and inclusive. From diverse cultures, ages and backgrounds they have a fundamental connection in a common philosophy and a desire to work in unconventional spaces, engaging untypical audiences and participants.
Sophie Hedderwick – Vitruvian Woman
Vitruvian Woman was premiered at the Dutch Film and Design Festival, the light costumes are based on the fibonacci sequence and the dance explores Da Vinci’s proportions re-invented for the female form. It has an original sound score by Nick Burge and choreography by Toby Norman-Wright, with dancers from Reflex Youth Dance Co.
It was filmed over four days, in a dark studio, and explores the traces we leave behind and digital transformations.
