Bi-Location Painting // 2012

Bi-Location Painting // 2012
PERIPHERIES | Art by Proxy // Gorey School of Art

Bi-Location Painting // Live Performance // Stand-in Painter

Tree Stand Stone

Bi-Location Painting

A performance using Skype as an interface connection to communicate and relay painting instructions from the artist’s home in Dublin to a substitute Painter in Gorey.

The Painting Session began with the usual bonhomie introductory pleasantries to the Stand-in Painter and the gathered audience in attendance. The core content for the painting was derived from key word searches found on various web site sand pages from the bookmarked cache. Instructions were relayed down the line to Gorey. Form, colour and paint application directives were also issued.

The nature of the search results was machine gun staccato in nature, reflecting the restless, garbled hyper linked grotesque realism of the web.

My phone began to repeat ring during the performance. It was my mother trying to get through to me. On the fourth attempt to ring me I decided to answer as the frequency of attempted calls increased suspecting that she really needed to talk to me. I took the call live. I was informed that my Uncle in Law Mick Kenny had died suddenly. He was a very nice man, whose house I stayed at during summer holidays. It was a bit of a shock to the system and this particular performance. I give a little on the spot memorial to Mick tempered with the realisation that the show must go on.

The performance continued on in frenetic web searches with garbled Chinese whisper instructions for another 5 minutes. I then got another fright when I saw somebody standing directly behind me in the Skype monitor behind me in the room. It was an old friend living in Spain who I had not seen in a year or two. Somebody had let him into the house and there he stood before me. He was introduced to the audience in Gorey.

The painting session continued on in erratic fashion. A painting was completed. It was a hotchpotch of vague intensity, with patches of intense colours mixed up in a murky mess.

The Performance was not recorded by any of those involved. This should not imply that it was unrecorded, as we all know the NSA and GCHQ are the greatest achievers in the history of humanity.