Archival Ephemera

2019 Performance 2hrs In 2019 for the culmination of his residence at the Florence Trust, David developed a performance piece that set about deconstructing his identity as an artist in his studio. After remodelling the studio and then developing an identity around an ‘artist’ working within a studio over 1 year, he set about displaying his collection of ephemera that he had collected over many years. This ephemera consisted of works of art from other artist, invitations to exhibitions, pieces of design, works of art by himself, photographs of people he had met and places he had been, letters, maps, sketches and plans for works of arts and videos. He then wrote a script detailing where he had collected all the ephemera and proceeded to develop the script into a performance for an audience about each piece in the collection. After the performance the studio was then cut into pieces and transformed into a sculpture that was shown in an exhibition at the end of the residency. The performance was given over 2 nights, the first night role of the artist was played by actress Sarah Barlondo. Sarah Barlondo is a British-French-Mexican actress who’s credits include films such as "Wonder Woman 1984", the Amazon Prime Independent film "Framed," and the Chanel 4 TV Film “Accused.” Sarah memorised the script about the objects and studied David’s mannerisms and perfected the role of the ‘The Artist.’ The audience was small due to the compact nature of the space and were all people that were personally known to David. Presented with an actress embodying the story of David, caused a strange sense of confusion within the audience, questioning, which parts of the performance where real and which were not. On the second night David himself proceeded to deliver the same script to a different audience, whilst on a small monitor the performance from the first night was shown. The pieces speaks about artifice in the role of the artist, gender politics, identity and architectural space.