A Performed Residency

A performed (and untitled) residency completed over the 6 days of Wimbledon’s Open Studios.

For this residency I sat on a mezzanine platform above the main reception area, typing on a portable typewriter on a single roll of paper, which extended off the platform as the residency continued. I typed in shifts each day while the public walked in and out to see the work on show (and often didn’t notice me as they entered).

My studio space was kept intact with all of the things I’d gathered in it over the last several months, I hoped visitors would walk in and look around but purposefully had no signage telling them to do so. Those who did at least poke their head round the corner saw a livestream of me typing from the platform playing on an old VHS TV in the corner. 

The platform gave me a certain level of separation. From my space in the studio, from the visitors and my fellow artists who had cleared up or fully dismantled their studio spaces to hang work professionally on the walls with clear labels and signs of what could/couldn’t be touched.

My initial framework for the residency was to choose an object (or set of objects) from my studio to write about each day. I did do that some days. But on others I let my mind drift and wrote about any and everything from my parents to a fly I spotted and watched die on the platform.

In a similar way to the writing I did in the studio before the show began. The words I typed on 7m (22ft) of this 1970s graph paper weren’t really important. What was important was that I showed up each day and typed.