Over the 10 day exhibition period at SWELL Sculpture Festival 2024, Jewell undertook a research project embedded in the work Haven (a collaborative sculptural work with textile artist Llama).

The performance project encompassed enquiries related to embodied practice and relational aesthetics via a durational and ritualised performance of tending the work. Research related to social choreography, self governing behaviours and socially engaged practice methodology provided a critical framework for the project.

Through the performance Jewell interacted with the audience and intuitively explored in the boundaries of performative care, conversation as care, somatic movement and 4th wall (de)construction. Practically the performance work was highly effective in keeping the delicate work intact, and through the performance of pruning, where damage had been sustained, the tending offered the audience a legible view into the making, maintaining and shaping of the work.

Through sustained tending the fragility of the work was actively communicated and additionally the audience was welcomed into the rituals of caring for the work, gently tracing its form and content.

This in situ experimentation generated multiple avenues of feedback from the audience's perception of care to their their engagement with the narrative in the work. Interestingly variations in the quality of performative tending revealed surprising thresholds, locating where the artist becomes part the work (embodied), an additional work or is adjacent to the work.

These thresholds are vital to ongoing development in the performance of care in temporary public works and represents fertile ground for further research.

Artist acknowledgement:

Many thanks to Daniele Constance, Geraldine Balcazar and Jorge Serra whose advice and guidance made this project possible.

Photographs:

1 & 6 by Jorge Serra (extracted stills)

3, 6-8 by Geraldine Balcazar Cabrera

Tending to a practice of care

Research and Performance at SWELL Sculpture Festival