How the miner looks: Tunnel (2015)

Commissioned by Matts Gallery and Lydney Park Estate for the Blackrock project, curated by Robin Klassnik.

The work has a companion piece, Viewpoint

Performance in a grain barn with 4 projected video channels and 1 projected live feed from the GoPro mounted on my head, moveable screens, live drawing, ceramic objects, and live narration. 

Duration: 14 minutes, repeated 12 times over one weekend.

The performance described, through story-telling, drawing, projected video and live video feed from a camera mounted on my head, the experience of a freeminer in the Forest of Dean. 

The work focussed particularly on one miner, James, with whom I spent a lot of time underground. I described the experience of entering his mine, the bodily restrictions of working in there, and the care, manifested in gestures and in speech, that James gave to his coal mine.  

The performance took place upon piles of black grain (mustard seed) stored in the barn that acted as the venue for the performance. The seeds formed props for projection screens, and created a strange, shifting landscape for the performance, that inhibited my movement and eroded and shifted as the performance developed.

Cables got tangled, images collapsed, the viewer was taken into the precarious dark world of the mine.