Philip Lee

Curated by Cally Trench and Philip Lee 

Do you remember it - or weren't you there? was an exhibition of work by artists and writers whose starting point was a live performance by Philip Lee and Cally Trench during 2010 and 2011. 

Documenting and describing live performance art is extraordinarily difficult. Photographs and videos can show you what happened, but rarely convey the feeling of being there, of experiencing the event at the time, in real time, live.

As an experiment, in 2010, Philip Lee and Cally Trench invited a number of artists to make work - their own work, not documentation - triggered by seeing one of their Blindfold Slip performances in late 2010 and early 2011. They wanted to explore the idea that one way of creating that feeling, of conveying a memory of the experience, might be through the making of another work of art. They proposed that this would be comparable to ekphrasis, the dramatic description of a work of art in the form of a poem.

Blindfold Slip 1

Blindfold Slip 2

Blindfold Slip 3

Blindfold Slip Private

Do you remember it - or weren't you there? featured work by Marco Calí, Alison Carter Tai, Judy Goldhill, Jane Grisewood, Ingrid Jensen, Lydia Julien, Philip Lee, Sophie Loss, Tony Moody, Claire Norman, Lorraine Pepper, Steve Perfect, Alan Prosser, Ann Rapstoff, Zahed Tajeddin, Cally Trench, Helen Udal, Mary Yacoob, and Silvia Ziranek, and was curated by Cally Trench and Philip Lee.

There is a fully illustrated catalogue, supported by CREAM (The Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster) available on request.

Click here for the Do you remember it -or weren't you there? website, with links to the press release, catalogue essay, photograph album and more. The exhibition was open 31st January to 3rd March 2013, at London Gallery West, University of Westminster, Harrow Campus.