Beginning in the City: October programme.
Friday 11 October:
Clerke & Joy, Tips for the Real World (or, if you’re not crying you’re not doing it right).
Sarah Ruff, Bad Wife
Saturday 12 October
Peter McMaster, Gold Piece
Review by Georgina Bolton
Bad Wife by Sarah Ruff – Photo by Paul Blakemore, www.paulblakemore.co.uk
This intimate night of performances formed just one part of a six-month strong programme about the future of Bristol. In the City, curated by Showroom Projects, brings together a number of collaborators and co-producers including: RESIDENCE, Knowle West Media Centre, PLaCE, In Between Time, MAYK, and YOU & YOUR WORK.
Started in July, and ending in December, each month has been curated by a different group. October’s installment (co-curated with In Between Time) was aptly titled Beginning in the City. Coinciding with the annual October student takeover, this was an invitation to both newcomers and Bristol veterans to re-imagine the city through live performance. Both Clerke & Joy and Sarah Ruff’s acts fulfilled this brief. The programme, imbued with an inescapable ‘future facing’ attitude, engages with issues facing the creative arts in Bristol – quite pertinent, as the Parlour Showrooms face imminent closure.
…an apt tale of two newly graduated artists offering ill-founded ‘advice’ to an audience equally as lost
Tips For The Real World by Clerke and Joy – Photo by Paul Blakemore, www.paulblakemore.co.uk
Originally developed for graduating students at University College Falmouth, Tips for the Real World is Rachael Clerke and Josephine Joy stumbling around in the dark. This was an apt tale of two newly graduated artists offering ill-founded ‘advice’ to an audience equally as lost. Since graduating last year, both have spent too many hours at the Job Centre, too many hours crying on the phone to their mothers and ‘too many hours wondering if they’ve got it all wrong.’ Have they? Warned in the first thirty seconds: “there’ll be dancing; there’ll be breasts…”, the duo open with the 90s classic I’m Not a Girl by Britney Spears. Their deadpan faces and multicoloured t-shirts set the tone for the unconventional ‘lecture’ to follow. Admitting they have ‘wasted a lot of time fucking up’, t-shirts were shed throughout the performance, with each rainbow garment stripped to reveal a revelation of words describing their fluctuating states of being – ‘stubborn’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘help ‘ to name a few.
Tips For The Real World by Clerke and Joy – Photo by Paul Blakemore, www.paulblakemore.co.uk
Advice ranges from the mundane to the ridiculous, but hidden beneath their air of comedic self-loathing is a more serious, dare I say, ‘helpful’ narrative. For example: how to apply for an arts council grant; how to register as self-employed. Clerke and Joy spill those all-important facts about the real world that us creatives are determined to ignore. Despite this hint of functionality the lecture soon propels back into a state of uselessness – the audience completely distracted by the fact they’ve both just whipped off their tops and are standing telling us about tax with their boobs out.
Making light of it all is the idea, and it really does seem to work. With a jar full of ‘Graduate Tears’ in one hand, the duo fully utilise the idea of disappointment, translating it into a humorous narrative spoken over a lighthearted soundtrack of Dusty Springfield classics. There may have been a few stumbled lines – the script is read directly from a thick wad of creased paper – but it’s hard not to embrace Clerke and Joy’s playfulness. Their honesty and genuine willingness to put their message out there (and have fun with it), is impossible to ignore.
It’s clear, however, that honesty doesn’t come without bruises, as one unfortunate quote from their Twitter feed demonstrated:
‘learn to paint or sculpt or fuck off’
So being an artist is hard, we know. But as the duo flog their colourful homemade tees for a fiver at the end of the show, I think about how life is supposed to be chaotic, messy, unplanned and difficult. It’s having our eyes open to it all and giving ourselves the freedom to experience it all that’s important. These girls are certainly doing just that – ‘thanks for listening to us pretending’, they conclude.
The second instalment of the night is also about tips, bad ones. Bad Wife, by performer and visual artist Sarah Ruff was a treat. Her work, rooted in forms of participatory experience, animation and intervention, had the audience sat with baited breath in the Parlour Showroom’s intimate confines as she asked what is a ‘good wife?’
Bad Wife by Sarah Ruff – Paul Blakemore www.paulblakemore.co.uk
The set is a complex array of projector screen, sofa, tv, microwave and hand-crafted dolls house made for some wonderful and weird images. There is a strong surrealist element to the aesthetic, with Ruff’s animated graphics conjuring up worrying images of Francis Bacon conjoined with a Grayson Perry ceramic. The best of these is a naked nan – crude but undeniably comic. There is a purposeful confusion of real, projected and imaginary space, reminding me of Grace Schwindt’s experimental film works. Ruff, however, seems to be collapsing dimensions in a much more performative and comical manner than Schwindt would ever intend.
In contrast to the rather brash performances of the first night is Peter McMaster’s poetically poignant Gold Piece – a one-to-one participatory workshop. Having recently discovered the Japanese practice of Kintsugi – the art of repairing cracks in porcelain or crockery with gold – McMaster invites people to help him fix some objects, which, using this ancient technique, become more valuable and beautiful for having been broken in the first place. Maybe there is something to be learnt from this.
N.B.
Clerke & Joy – http://www.clerkeandjoy.com/
Sarah Ruff – http://sarahruff.weebly.com/
Peter McMaster – http://www.petermcmaster.org/#!__gold-piece
The Parlour Showroom is recruiting participants for November’s event, The Human Library. Co-produced with MAYK, The Human Library takes a fresh look at storytelling, only the books are people and reading them involves a conversation – be a part of the story and sign up now.
For more information on past and upcoming events in ‘In the City Series’ visit http://inthecityseries.co.uk/
