Philip Lee

Installation and live body performance with clay, mars violet raw pigment, water and three fabric panels, each 250 cm by 85 cm, of three different grades of cotton - that is, canvas, calico and muslin

Assisted by Bruce Currie and Frances Anne Greenough

Performance - 12 December 2008
At the opening of 'On The Surface'
at The Parlour, Kentish Town, London
Exhibition continued until 18 January 2009

The Parlour
181-185 Queens Crescent
Kentish Town, London

Part of On The Surface organized and curated by Cally Trench
The Parlour curator was Kasia Kwiatkowska

Lee performed Stable V - a live body action - during the opening event of On The Surface at The Parlour on Friday 12th December from 7 - 8 pm. He used clay and pigment, in the form of slip, on his body to make full-body prints on panels of cream-coloured canvas, calico and muslin - three different grades of cotton fabric. These were installed in the gallery before the opening and taken down by Lee, using a ladder, as they were needed during the performance. Once the print was completed Lee returned it to its original position. At the conclusion of the performance Lee cleared the space to leave only the body prints. Romain Forquy documented the performance throughout. Later nine of his photographs were added to the installation on an adjacent wall.

Cally Trench organised and curated On The Surface and writes:

"We human beings find it hard to leave surfaces alone. Over the centuries, we have painted, stitched, incised, etched, built, shaved and carved marks onto every kind of surface: our bodies, our textiles and building materials, the objects we manufacture, the earth itself, and our own skin.

What is this mark-making urge? Is it territorial or a sign of ownership? A way of proving that we exist? A kind of protest? Or a compulsion, something that we, with our tool-holding hands, simply can't help doing? But marks can also be accidental or incidental, a by-product of another activity - a skid mark on a road, a graze on a knee, a blood stain, or an ink blot - without significance unless someone constructs or deduces a meaning."

On The Surface at The Parlour in London in December 2008 and Surface! at the Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock in April 2009 form a two-part exploration of the covering, uncovering and discovering of marks on surfaces. The two exhibitions showed different work by the participating artists.

The artists are Jacqueline Ashmore, Tânia Bandeira Duarte, Alex Dewart, Alan Franklin, Frances Anne Greenough, Estelle Holland, Patrick Jeffs, Philip Lee, Lis Mann, Cally Trench, and Imogen Welch. The exhibitions were curated by Cally Trench.