REVIEW: I AM NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN YOU: LIVE ART / PERFORMANCE AT THE BUN HOUSE
I went to the the recent exhibition “I am not here to entertain you” upon entering this very traditional East End boozer in Peckham, I didn’t expect to find a small gallery out the back. The Bun House Project Space is an unconventional gallery that challenges artworks to react directly with it’s local environment and offbeat audience.
The exhibition “I am not here to entertain you” operated under the curatorial pseudonym of ‘Karl Weill’ a fictional male performance alter ego of Vanessa Mitter (curator, artist & writer). Within the fictional press release it states: “What is the performative tactic if it is not a calculated assault on the audience? It is forbidden to forbid. I want you to imagine, for a moment, an audience who are not entertained.” This exhibition appears to explore the confrontational role of performance, Is this title knowingly contradictory? Virtuosic performances such as these require and necessitate an audience in order to exist, If they are not here to entertain us, why are they here and what are they here for? What is the dynamic between audience and work? I began to question the very dynamics of what we want and expect from performance.
Scattered within the space and pub were Doireann Ni Ghrioghair’s monumental and phallic sculptures comprised of plaster and concrete. Ghrioghair subverts these monumental structures through her use of gregarious pastel colours. The sculptures toy with our conventions and ideologies of the monument and take the form of architectural follies. Which brought an air of frivolity and playfulness to the pub, something which felt unexpected within this environment. The arrangement and impermanence of the sculptures were in keeping with the curated night of short performances that were about to take place.
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