DESSERT

Developed over the course of the three Reframing the 'Sentimental' in the Art of the Maternal workshops, DESSERT is a joyful and interactive performance work that celebrates still being here to enjoy the pudding, even when the ice cream hitting your receded gums makes you wince.
 
The work invited participation as people drew raspberries on labels to be pinned onto the artist. Clare transformed from the conversational and humorous to the performative and poetic in a work that honours the ageing maternal body but also reveals the often painful reality of inhabiting it. Along the way she artfully employed traditional womanly skills, food preparation and healing massage, more usually practised in the kitchen or bedroom, as she lovingly prepared sites of fatigue and post trauma on her body to be viewed and enjoyed by both herself and guests.

 

As she has done in previous performance works, she began the piece before arriving at the venue by drawing, this time a raspberry, in chalk on the railway platform at Charlbury station as she set out to travel to London.

When working in public this way she often invites strangers to photograph her and if they wish, to talk about her work and why the actions can be seen as art.

 

For DESSERT she was able to bookend the piece by drawing a raspberry on the platform outside the gallery at Wandsworth Common station as a train arrived.  

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Photos : the artist