'our creation is that guru; the duration of our lives is that guru; our trials, illnesses and calamaties is that guru. There is a guru that is nearby and a guru that is beyond the beyond. I humbly make my offering to the guru, the beautiful remover of ignorance, the enlightenment principle that is within me and surrounds me at all times.'
Guru Stotram

Wednesday 21 March 2012

Exchange
La Scatola Gallery
1 Snowden Street, EC2A 6DQ
Monday 26 March to Friday 30 March


Friday 30 March
main happening 6.00-8.30pm
It's Just Like Any Other Job Really (Dedicated to World Peace)
a live art project by artist Sarah Maple and writer / curator Beverley Knowles



Artist Sarah Maple and writer / curator Beverley Knowles will be taking part in a week-long series of talks and performances at La Scatola Gallery wherein developments and trends in contemporary art will be explored.

On Friday 30 March they will present It's Just Like Any Other Job Really (Dedicated to World Peace), a collaborative performance influenced by feminist and non-feminist art history, particularly the performative works of artists such as VALIE EXPORT, Carolee Schneeman, Marina Abramovich, Tehching Hsieh and Andrea Fraser. Dedicated to World Peace also makes particular reference to Santiago Sierra's Group of Persons Facing a Wall, a provocative work staged at Tate Modern on 21 April 2008.

Dedicated to World Peace investigates relationships between women through the metaphor of the annual Miss World competition, which extraordinarily outmoded pageant continues to roll on year after year. It will highlight the cliches and stereotypes of what is seen to constitute 'femininity', of what it is to be a woman in 2012. However, the piece does not wish to engage a reductive or didactic view of feminism and gender roles but rather seeks to ask questions about the binary position of gender - performance verses essence. It is also interested in issues of choice or lack there of.

Influenced by artists such as Jeremy Deller and John Gerrard, Sarah Maple and Beverley Knowles wish to abnegate individual authorship and present the piece as a group collaboration between themselves and the participants in this faux Miss World. Upon entering the gallery the viewer also becomes an inadvertent participant in the competition for world supremacy.



It's Just Like Any Other Job Really (Dedicated to World Peace) is a collaboration between Sarah Maple, Beverley Knowles, Gabriela Belard, Angine Bines, Terri Bryan, Natasha Chamberlain-Kent, Veronika Chapman, Rebecca Coates, Olenka Cogias, Tamsin Cotsell, Rachel DiBaiso, Michelle Egan, Miriam Elia, Jess Ettridge, Kate Fidczuksterry, Amy Forrest, Liepa Grigaite, Kelley Griffiths, Bea Hamill, Holly Hardy, Laura Heckford, Holly Howe, Emer Hutton, Rachel James-Bailey, Hannah Catherine Jones, Kayleigh King,, Isabella Lopez-Smith, Adriana Martinez, Alisha Palmer, Katy Pike, Madeleine Scott Cree, Lisa Selby, Nikita Todd, Sarah Vero, Thaires Vicentini, Irina Yordanova and La Scatola Gallery

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