‘Art, Lies and Videotape’

Exhibition exploring the history of performance art over the past 100 years
Liverpool Tate Gallery

Reviewed by Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney

Art, Lies and Videotape is an exhibition with a difference.  The collection offers a history of performance art and the notions of artistic exploration through the recording of live art.  This is presented in a selection of photographs, objects, reconstruction, video and films covering the last century.   From what appears as a moments madness with cascading bed linen and ballet shoes, by Loie Fuller, Untitled 1905, moreover shows the curiosities to the notions of dance and the relevance of the moving image as an art form to performance.  Similar is reflected in ‘Anthropometries’ (1960) in which Yves Klein directs his female models to make body prints. At the end of the film the camera swings round to show a small and very formal audience.

The exhibition though moves to the deeper carnal curiosities, posed both in terms of suggested and factual events documented.  Examples of these are in the  fictional aspects of some works, such as the fake blood in Martin Scorcese’s student Film The Big Shave 1967, whereas in others, such as Hayley Newman’s photographs, it is uncertain whether it is factual or not.   In contrast to these ambiguities, Franko B and Ron Athey push their bodies to extremity and the fundamentals of mark marking in art inscribed in the flesh.  Whatever your proclivity, this exhibition intrigues all of our curiosities and is not only reflective of the transitions in art history in the recording of performance, but rather to our own clandestine desires and apathetic preconceptions.

The Tate and the Blue Coats Centre live art programme provides a platform to contemporary performance artists.  Cathy Butterworth, Blue Coats Arts Centre, can be contacted on either 0151 709 5297, email cathy@bluecoatartscentre.com.

Until 25 January 2004
Admission £4 Conc £3
Tel: 0151-702 7402