Anxtions
1970-80
During the 70’s, with the artist Peter Davey, both in public and private investigations we made a series of ‘anxtions;’ anxious actions. These actions, included reconstructing paintings as ‘live’ works, collaborative paintings, reconstructing Bollywood scripts, taking a journey prescribed by chance edicts and based on Samuel Beckett’s novel ‘Mercier and Camier,” evoking the wild imagery conjured in songs such as Screaming Jay Hawkin’s ‘Alligator Wine’ to create visual/sound actions, working with the poet May Green on specially commissioned poetry to be used as improvised texts:
And the Sunflowers
Turn in a long slow
Dance
Offering fierce
Sun bird seed
While cowboys
Thread small cattle,
down a dusty lane
in Florida
M. G. 1978
In the 1979 Hayward Annual, with Peter Davey, we presented 15 ‘ANXTIONS.’ These anxious actions including one in which, painted gold with honey on our heads, Peter delivered an academic lecture on Beuys as shaman whilst I unpicked a fluffy toy rabbit, laying it’s stuffing and furry material out as an exhibit. I then wrote “Art or Archive” and put these words, the rabbit bits and torn up books in an electric blender which shredded all ofthem. I read out bits of text from this fragments to make a cut-up poem.
Letter to Helen Chadwick curator of Hayward Annual 1979
Dear Helen,
This is a brief description of the piece I intend doing for the Hayward Annual. I will be doing it with one other person, Peter Davey and it will be 15 x 5 minute performances. As things stand at present the following are the proposed ideas or titles of each part:
1) A WRESTLING MATCH
2) NEXT STOP LUMASVILLE (A HORROR PLAY) ) INTIMATE CONFESSIONS
4) A LECTURE ON JOSEPH BEUYS
5) A PERFECTLY EXECUTED DANCE FROM AFRICA
6) MAN INTO WOLF (A VOICE/MUSIC PIECE) 7) MR SPIRE AND MRS SPEER (A DOCUMENTION OF A JOURNEY BASED ON BECKETT’S ‘MERCIER AND CAMIER’
8) ‘THE GREEN ROBE’ (A RESTRUCTURING OF MATISSE’S PAINTING)
9) A POLISHED CABARET PIECE
10) THE COMEDIAN
11) A CONVERSATION ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE PIECE
12) AN UNKNOWN POETESS READING HER POETRY
13) 5 TOTALLY UNPREPARED MINUTES
14) THOUGHTS ON AN INDIAN SUMMER EVENING (THE MEMORY OF A CONVERSATION)
15) HYPNOTISING THE AUDIENCE INTO HAVING HAD A GOOD TIME
