Performance Art, Glue Factory, Glasgow, UK, 2016
A transformative pivot of my artistic identity. BATHTISM took the shape of a public initiation into a magikal relationship with a part of myself that seems to hold its own autonomy. With sanity hung delicate in the balance, an intuitive faith I have come to call Funomenology flowered around this ceremony. Drawing inspiration from bath-time-nostalgia, shamanic trials, and my own Baptism, the resulting pseudo-ritual, culminating after a 3-week vow of silence, cobbled together and then dispelled: hymns, prayers, riddles, nudity, fruit, masks, reflections, an opening parade, and a showering crescendo of molted skins and dirty bath water. The performance has since become the progenitor to an ongoing series of works where the religious sacraments and symbolism of my upbringing are reimagined to serve, for better or worse, the metabolic processes of a new deity – one with lesser notoriety but greater personal sovereignty.
