Sally Madge

20/03/2010
Making a mess and clearing up: the artist’s impression

Making a mess

A seven hour performance in which the artist drew blindfolded on the walls of the gallery with handmade charcoal. She then removed the blindfold, washed down the walls, swept the floor and repainted the space. Throughout the day viewers could watch the event through the windows or enter the space. They were offered disposable cameras to record the process.

Drawings, prints and paintings were made throughout the day by various methods and with a range of tools and materials on walls, windows, doors, the floor, body and clothing. Graffiti, childhood scribbling, surrealist automatism, psychogeography and Freud’s mystic writing pad were all made reference to in these acts.

Sally Madge - Making a mess and clearing up

By the end of the day no apparent trace of the artist’s presence was left, the space
seemed restored to its original state with all the stages of mark making sealed into the fabric of the building and preserved behind a screen of white. This minimal outcome privileges the expressive process by refusing a final fetishised art object. However, the photographs taken by viewers remain as tangible testament and memory of the event.

See video of the event:
Sally Madge: Making A Mess and Clearing it Up from CIRCA Contemporary Art Projects on Vimeo.