In the conversation between David Toop and Adam Parkinson that we read in class, one particular work of performance art that was mentioned caught my interest. This is the ‘Singing Sculpture’, first performed at St Martin’s School of Art in 1969 by collaborative duo Gilbert and George.
This piece is part of what Toop describes as “an impulse to go beyond a certain kind of art or music practice”. The piece blends together a number of different mediums including sculpture, performance art and sound art. The song that the duo are singing along to is ‘Underneath the Arches’ by 1930’s variety act Flanagan and Allen.
One reason why this piece is innovative is that it is an early instance of people, as it were, being exhibited in a gallery. Gilbert and George insisted on painting themselves silver and having the record play on repeat, sometimes for eight hours at a time. This in a way anonymised them and almost seem as though they were robots running off clockwork. In one interview Gilbert described an audience member saying that the artwork was “sort of like a force of nature, like a waterfall”. Often viewers would stay and watch the sculpture for multiple repetitions, almost feeling as if they were in a trance-like state where they couldn’t get up and leave.
I find this piece interesting and relevant to my own work as I would love to work across different disciplines whilst still using sound as my primary form of communication. A mixed media art piece, particularly one involving performance art, is something I would like to create whilst studying on this course. There is something so eerie and dehumanising about the way Gilbert and George present themselves in the piece, and I think I would like to go for something similar but maybe in a more modern context. The ‘uncanny valley’ would be an interesting topic to explore.
References
- Toop, D., Parkinson, A., 2015. Unfinished Business: A Conversation on Sound Art in the United Kingdom.
- ABC News, 2010. Singing Sculpture. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGBaShS_Ktg&t=127s> [Accessed 8 December 2021].