Performance Art

Performance art emerged as a distinct practice in the 1960s, placing the artist’s body, actions, and presence at the centre of the work. Operating across endurance, ritual, institutional critique, and political action, it challenged the object-based conventions of painting and sculpture. Associated with figures including Stuart Brisley, Marina Abramović, Chris Burden, Yoko Ono, and Joseph Beuys, performance art generated a body of documentation — photographs, catalogues, scores, and ephemera — that circulates as both record and residue of actions that cannot be repeated.

  • `Stuart Brisley — Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 21 April – 31 May 1981. Exhibition catalogue front cover. Dark green cloth-bound hardcover with white text. Left column: dictionary definition of "Performance" (Oxford English Dictionary). Right column: artist name "Stuart Brisley" in white. ICA logotype at foot centre.` `Stuart Brisley — ICA, London, 1981 — interior plate. Black and white photograph documenting performance ZL 65 63 95 C, London, 1972. Brisley seated in a darkened room, debris and liquid covering the floor, paint-marked window behind. Caption: "ZL 65 63 95 C, London 1972 (57)."`

    Stuart Brisley — Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1981

    Stuart Brisley — Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1981

  • William Pope.L — some things you can do with blackness…, Kenny Schachter Rove, London, 2005. Front cover. Deep red ground. Centre: close-up photograph of a small black bear-like sculptural object, heavily textured surface with white dust or residue, suspended or resting against two white diagonal rods. White serif title text lower centre: "William Pope.L / some things you can do with blackness…" William Pope.L — some things you can do with blackness…, 2005 — interior plate, p. 5. Skin Set Drawings, 2002–2004. Four colour drawings on grid paper, each filled edge to edge with large hand-lettered text: upper left, purple on white: "RED PEOPLE ARE A NOVEL SET IN THE HEAD OF A WATERMOCCASIN"; upper right, yellow-green on white: "YELLOW PEOPLE ARE A TEA OF SANITY"; lower left, black on white: "RED PEOPLE ARE A LIQUID IN A BEAKER IN A LAB IN MANCHESTER ENGLAND"; lower right, blue and green on blue: "BLACK

    William Pope.L — some things you can do with blackness…, Kenny Schachter Rove, London, 2005

    William Pope.L — some things you can do with blackness…, Kenny Schachter Rove, London, 2005

  • Original 1979 AA Bronson and Peggy Gale, eds., Performance by Artists, Art Metropole, Toronto. Softcover with white ground and bold black title typography, 'Performance by Artists' in large sans-serif type, editors' names below, Art Metropole imprint at foot. Interior page from 1979 Performance by Artists, Art Metropole. Black-and-white photograph of Ulay and Marina Abramovic in a durational performance, two nude figures facing each other with a clothed photographer between them in a narrow doorway.

    AA Bronson & Peggy Gale, eds. — Performance by Artists

    AA Bronson & Peggy Gale, eds. — Performance by Artists