Gurelain Vétiver
2022
Loughborough University Light and Sound Gallery, UK.
December 20th - 21st 2022
One kilogram of raw beef is presented on a tower built from overhead office light fittings. Over forty minutes, Oliver (a long-term vegan) eats as much of it as he can.
The work marks a pivot in the practice. Where earlier pieces made members of the public the material of the work, Guerlain Vétiver relocates that weight onto the artist. Labour is enacted, not just depicted: a set quantity, a fixed period, a task carried to its limit before an audience with no means of intervening. The viewer occupies the position of the party for whom the work is performed.
Its precedent is work of the social body, in which an act performed on one individual stands for a wider condition. Here the individual is the artist rather than a recruited subject, and the condition is complicity in its performance.