1971/2

I often integrated performance in everyday life, such as sticking plastic flies over my face when I went out, or pulling an object along the street for both the sound and visual qualities inherent in them, including a quacking wooden duck and dead rabbits on roller skates. This led on to other rabbit works that touched this ‘animation of the dead’ such as ‘burial’ pieces, where I would dig holes and place differently paced entropic material in them, often in places where people might stumble across them in woodlands. These included dead rabbits embracing and rotting in each other’s arms or another, with golden bugles to the rabbit’s mouths, as they seemingly played the Last Post to themselves or each other, whilst they decayed to leave only their bugles, still gaudy and vibrant.

Another action I instigated in a social situation that probed these life/art schisms was a children’s picnic where I probed the core tensions and fears of fairytales. The kindly sweet-offering, lollypop gifting, icing sugared woman suddenly emerged as a demonic force yelling MORTALITY