Shock, horror and bewilderment! The Brayford Painting, which our performance was to be based on was stolen! Maybe not stolen, but in the room in question where it used to hang is now home to a pencil on paper drawing of the ‘Venus de Milo’.
The ‘Venus de Milo’ is a sculpture statue of the Ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite. Already we are starting to use this as an idea to incorporate into our piece. We are turning the negativity of the painting bring removed and replaced into a positive. The statue itself is a copy/interpretation of a supernatural being so its physical form could be anything. This is the artist’s copy of her. The drawings in the Usher Gallery of her are also copies. Or rather copies of a copy.
My role in the performance is to draw pencil on paper, similar to the ‘Venus de Milo’, the beauty of the girls in my group putting on and taking off their makeup. And therefore creating my own copies of the live art in front of me.