| Description: | This site-specific installation and performance was in two parts. One was a performance with members of the audience which formed the opening work and performance for the whole exhibition. The other was a a 47ft long series of photographs based on the video 'Spit-Girl-Contest', which Cole had made earlier in collaboration with two teenagers during the project Shout - Voices From the Edge, with BoxClever Theatre Company. The girls represented in the photographs were engaged in a competition to beat each other through fluid saturation. The images are sexually ambiguous, and raise questions about pleasure, contamination and the permeability of boundaries. This performance and installation in the context of hygiene and health developed from an extended period of interest in spitting and kissing as a performative action, (referencing Mary Douglas’s text ‘Purity and Danger’) and in matters of health and hygiene. It was first explored with a group of teenagers in foster care, funded by Cambridge Drugs Action. The resulting video was seen and discussed by health and social care professionals as well as a more general audience. |
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| Additional Information (Publicly available): | Sarah Cole is a visual artist who makes work in contexts beyond the gallery or museum. Her practice involves the orchestration of collaborative encounters and conversations with people in their environments. Through consultation with different communities, the work attempts to generate a non-exclusive dialogue with its participants and their milieu, adopting a language of reciprocity to establish opportunities for sharing and participation in the work. Her research takes the form of performative events and recordings, multimedia installations and educational presentations. |
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