performance

I was still at school, it must have been 1970, I am not sure exactly. We were taken by an enlightened teacher to see HAIR at a theatre in the West End. We got there by coach from East London. We sat at the very back of the theatre, in seats so far up that they were called the gods. Looking down, I was scared, we were so high. Then the lights dimmed and I watched, spellbound as my life was changed forever. The performance, the music and the sentiment, felt completely liberating. I was liberated from a situation where, I had no idea, I was actually being held captive.

My school was a dark victorian school for boys. It looked like prison and felt like an asylum. So after I saw this performance of HAIR, everything changed, I went back to school and to my life, a different person. There was another event that changed my life, which involved having an entire year without any formal education, but I will come to that later.

I only had one year left at school, I did very little and was bored out of my mind everyday. We were basically kettled and held against our will and subjected to endless hours of light clerical work. They tried in vain to get us to remember things we had no interest in, like dates of battles and catastrophes. The most remarkable thing I learnt in my entire time at school was the rubber came from trees in Malaysia. That was mind blowing. So school trips were escapes and I had two that were pivotal, one was seeing HAIR the other seeing Edward Kienholz at the ICA in 1971 (more on that later). The move in my final year to the new high school, which was mixed, girls and boys together, changed something. Although the building had changed to a new built modern version, we still had basically no power. It felt like we had gone into some kind of open prison. The headmaster decided that each class had a moment to take assembly. When our class had its turn it was the usual bible story read out, followed by a hymn.

Then our class turn came around again and I said I wanted to do this. So they let me, not knowing what I would do. I got some friends to help and did not tell our teacher what I would do. Everyone arrived for assembly. As soon as they all sat down, i made a signal, the lights went out, we read an anti-war poem, followed by machine gun noise and then we straight into a song from HAIR blasting out into the darkness. The kids stamped on the floor and joined in with the music and it was almost a riot.

The headmaster must have been beside himself and eventually the teaching staff turned on all the lights, to stop the event, I turned them off again. I think I got into trouble, but I was so often in trouble it made no difference to me. It was a huge success and I have been working my way down ever since.

But I fell in love with the theatre, live events and happenings and it took me just over 40 years to pick up where I left off.

Since 2007 I have been involved in collaborations with cinematographers, musicians, choirs, composers and since 2012 dancers. This has enriched my work and experiences and has had an enormous effect on the finished works. Crossing over boundaries is something that I have always done, with the early building interventions and exhibitions in domestic houses, as well as museums such as The British museum, Tate modern, MACBA in Barcelona and Muse Bellas Artes in Venezuela.

‘Taking things a part to see how they were made has been a preoccupation since childhood. It is a method and process that allows me to gain an insight into what the medium can do, and how the meaning of the work can be understood. It is a dark into light experience and involves working an idea over and over to gain an understanding of the medium or structure.

Remembering memories - where things began - how they infect and influence your life.