Philip Lee

6 July 2006
Synergy Gallery
Camberwell, London

Performance at the opening on 6th July 2006 of 'Human Technology'
curated by Rose Lopes at the
Synergy Gallery, Camberwell, London

Installation including performance materials, object and photographs
of the performance

The following text can be found in the Human Technology catalogue:

Philip Lee and Human Technology

Philip Lee has been performing with clay since November 2000. His installations & performances integrate live body mark-making and sculptural display. In his Slip performances the artist's body becomes the art object.

His body goes through a series of transformations brought about with the help of liquid clay or 'slip'. The intimacy of the clay with Lee's body transforms his ordinary body into something that becomes sculptural and classical while staying animate and contemporary. In the live moment the viewer is particularly aware of the form of the male body as the blemishes of individuality are covered in clay.

Lee's performances bring together the technologies of the human body and that of unfired clay. The link between clay and the body seems to have always been - clay has been used to represent the human body for millennia.

When soft, clay displays a fleshy quality, is malleable and retains its shape, thin layers can assume the texture and quality of skin. In mythology clay has long been linked to and considered a substitute for flesh and blood. In the Jewish fable of the Golem, a rabbi creates an effigy made from clay, which is brought to life by placing sacred words written on paper, and placed in the Golem's mouth. Lee's performances reverse this process, bringing the body back to its apparent origins in the clay.