The Head On A Plate Project by Martina Larsson
“The enigma derives from the fact that my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognise, in what it sees, the ‘other side’ of its power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensitive for itself.”
Earlier this year, in October, during the week that Frieze Art Fairs took place, Sarah Kent and Sharon Leahy-Clark occupied Fitzrovia Gallery a short walk from Regent’s Park. Fitzrovia Gallery is one of the growing number of exhibition venues available to rent, surviving of fees and contrary to the ancient tradition of art patronage shifting risk onto the artist. As the coordinator of events and with an interest in supporting emerging artists and artists whose practices don’t lend themselves to commerce, I use any opportunity to override the system and make what I consider relevant art visible. With the calendar empty those dates in October I decided to invite Sarah and Sharon, or Head on a Plate Project (HOPP) as they call themselves when collaborating, to use the space for their live performative drawing. The collaboration came about in 2021 after the two met at a performance event in Norfolk. The topic of drawing came up in a conversation during a walk on the beach that followed the event and soon thereafter Sarah approached Sharon with the proposal. Sarah, known to many as a sharp critic and spokeswoman for female artists active in the 80s and 90s, had sought a format to combine performance art with drawing for some time and this, a fast-paced, immersive mark making conducted as a pair seemed to be it. Spontaneity, Sarah says, is what sets performance apart from other forms of art. Another important aspect of the collaboration would relate to their gender and age. They have both passed the age when women are considered exciting, either by being fertile or powerful, and vanish from sight in arts and society at large.
Sarah Kent and Sharon Leahy-Clark occupied Fitzrovia Gallery
Older women have been underrepresented - both as creators and subjects - in institutions until recently when the situation changed for the better, even if there is an irony to a watershed of recognition when very little has changed in what is suddenly being celebrated. It is not in Sarah and Sharon’s interest to be subjects but the sheer absence of older women in imagery that is one of their concerns. HOPP is about visibility and in this lies the importance of the artists’ presence in the space, as well as the resultant drawing, surviving as a record of the performance. HOPP is however not a time capsule. With regular performances at the Centre for Recent Drawing in north London and a three-week exhibition with a series of performances scheduled for February next year at 303 Projects in Norfolk, it is very much ongoing.
The title of the project – Head on a Plate – takes its cue from the collaborative act of vengeance upon men narrated in the biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes with the aid of her senior maid. Throughout the week in my conversations with Sarah and Sharon I sense a distinct quest for recognition, but never the revenge that was a driving force behind the Me Too movement. There is rage but it is composed and funneled into artistic practices. There is never one particular event or individual mentioned, they are not at war. Having said that, the t-shirts they have designed for the event, with the Head on a Plate logo on the front and ‘haute cuisine’ on the back does conjure a mental image of a man’s head served right from the oven…
It is agreed that Sarah and Sharon will spend Wednesday, Thursday and Friday drawing live in the gallery, with the event open to public, followed by an exhibition of the new work over the weekend. I quickly learn that this is a strict collaboration. With either of the artists absent, the space is quiet and looks like a studio after closing hours with sheets of paper rolled up along the walls. A large box of neatly arranged crayons, pencils, inks and nail polish positioned on the floor next to a sheet laid out in preparation for the performance. Once they are both there, they get into their black drawing outfits, get barefoot, and the space comes alive. They kneel, occasionally crawl, cross hatch each other’s arms to continue a mark or motif put down by the other. The sheet of paper is so large they can only work on one section at a time. With two people at work, complementing each other’s mark making, the drawing evolves at a fast pace and I come to think of a primary school teacher who would waken our enthusiasm for text writing by composing sentences on the black board using left and right hand simultaneously. The ability to activate two sources of agency within oneself seemed both liberating and empowering at the time, and I experience something similar as I observe Sarah and Sharon. Fuck Hegel. I don’t need no other.
The performance is truly collaborative and the drawing intuitive. They work alongside each other or in response to each other’s marks, sometimes working over. Rules seem to be excluded, but I may be wrong. There is certainly no self-assertion at play. One of the two draws a line with a crayon, the other complements with a smudged line of pastel. Neither is leading, it is not a tango. Rather Contact Improvisation, a form of improvised dancing that involves the exploration of one’s body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and awareness. There is a dialogue between the two artist-bodies, recorded on the sheet of paper. Not entirely different from the vagina-painting of 1960s’ feminist art, invented to demonstrate the female gender’s sheer existence also in between penetration. What is happening on Whitfield Street this week is less explicit but the spirit is there. As the week goes on I can’t help but feeling uncomfortable about hosting the event in the gallery. Everything (or most, at least) HOPP stands for is rejected by the very structure our business model conforms to. I don’t know the figures but a wild guess is that the great majority of landlords in central London are men, offering property – and visibility – to mostly male business proprietors. Sharon and Sarah are here because the landlords of this particular venue are serendipitously slack. Their presence becomes a sand corn in a shoe, hardly visible but fantastically annoying. I decide that this is good.
Thoughts around invisibility start to emerge. I am reluctant to think that only older women experience invisibility, and it dawns on me that this is what I feel, sharing a living space with an older man of a high-status profession. To not experience external interest in internal progress or desires, to not have a reason to reflect and articulate, is invisibility. Surely many are worse off than I am, leading the life I do. I look around me, at people passing by on Warren Street.
It does take two be seen and the performance element democratizes the drawing process. Visitors come and go as rumours of the event spread on Instagram. Some stay and ask questions, chat with the artists as they draw, others are brief but seem fascinated with both the process and result. A drawing session typically lasts two to three hours, sometimes longer with intervals to give sore backs and knees a break. Once complete, the drawing is hung on the wall and first then do we consider it in its entirety. A dialogue is visible and there is an overall harmony to the compositions. embryonic forms in bright tones, black, gold and silver, embellished or smudged by what does bring to mind female fingertips. The gallery space is rather narrow and doesn’t particularly lend itself to works of these dimensions, but we still enjoy them. Hung with clips and curling at the lower end, they resemble immense scrolls asking to be read.
Walking around Frieze London at the weekend I note that there are works by female artists in their sixties and over exhibited in numerous stands, though the leading galleries almost exclusively focus on younger – male and female – artists. I suspect that Sarah and Sharon wouldn’t deny the presence of older women on the art market; they address something less specific that can’t be subverted as easily.
Sarah and Sharon have successful practices alongside HOPP. Sarah is a visual artist and performer, as well as critic and curator. Sharon has a studio practice with a base at the Centre for Recent Drawing and exhibits internationally. She is a tutor in drawing at the Art Academy, London.
Martina Larsson
