Philip Lee

Installation and live body performance with clay, yellow ochre
& mars violet raw pigments and water.

Installation included: inkjet body print on silk -Stable V Silk Panel 3, 2009, a ceramic piece -Stable Slab 2008, three panels of translucent inkjet film, each 250 cm x 92 cm, on which Philip made a body-prints live during the performance -Stable VI Panels 1, 2 and 3, 2009.

Philip was assisted by Les Armstrong, Bruce Currie, and Alasdar Dewart

Performance - 4 April 2009, 1 - 1.30 pm
Exhibition continued until 26 April 2009

Installations: In the Brewhouse Gallery
Performance: The Coach House Gallery
Both spaces are adjacent to The Garden Gallery at
The Oxfordshire Museum
Park Street, Woodstock, UK

Lee's performance and installation was part of Surface!
organized and curated by Cally Trench

The Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock curator is Cherry Gray

Before the opening event, Lee installed in the Brewhouse space a silk panel, on which there was printed a copy of one of the body-prints made during Stable Vin December 2008. Below this, on the floor, there was Stable Slab, 2008- an unglazed ceramic sculpture with a full-body print on its surface. This piece has been broken into 6 unequal sections.
In the Coach House Gallery Lee installed, flat on the floor, the blank inkjet film panels, along with all the materials he needed to print his body on the panels during the live body action.

Lee performedStable VIduring the opening event ofSurface!on Saturday 4 April from 1 pm. He used coloured slips on his body to make full body prints on the three film panels. For the first panel he used cream-coloured slip, for the second yellow-coloured and the third mars-violet-coloured slip. The slips were made using clay made liquid with water and coloured using yellow ochre or mars violet pigment. All the print materials are simple earth materials. After the opening event closed the three completed panels were suspended in the Brewhouse Gallery, over the ceramic body-print,Stable Slab 2008, in place of the silk panel.

Cally Trench organised and curated 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.