Projects Blog

Performprint: Fremantle Print Award

Peformprint statement:

Bearings, beauty and irrelevance talks about the inconsequential nature of art, text, and performance. In this work we are trying to highlight the aesthetic and ephemeral qualities of such activities through the combination of printmaking and skateboarding.  The performance of skateboarding and the art of text are two activities whose agencies are inherently purposeless though this is also their strength, their beauty. Bearings, beauty and irrelevance is an attempt to articulate this duality – the meaningful and the meaningless.

Logistics:

The work is performed within the gallery directly on the floor. A circular ink (thick ink) bed should be prepared in the centre of the 3mx3m performance area. The ink should be applied directly onto the floor with a spatula and rolled out using a print roller. We have supplied a circular stencil and ink for the ink bed, four carved skateboard wheels (which the skateboarder will have to mount onto his board in any formation) and an indemnity contract (in the form of a wearable T-shirt) which the skateboarder will have to sign with white ink and wear during each performance to clear Performprint and FAC of an liability. The T-shirt becomes the property of the skateboarder.

A skateboarder will ride through the circular bed of ink repeatedly for 10-20 minutes generally keeping within the square area creating the work. When the ink has sufficiently spread across the square the performance is finished and the print vestige is left.