Julia Hayes Proposal for Bow Studio Award

September 2013

Julia Hayes Artist Statement

Julia Hayes’s diverse practice is drawn out of an idealised and celebra-tory view of humanity at play. Drawings, performance, and textile pieces combine to establish a landscape of celebration. The production of posi-tive idealised festive body born of human cooperation becomes a princi-ple focus of the work. And the aim is not to offer critique or to celebrate but to examine the ambivalence of carnival laughter and transgression as in Mikhail Bakhtin’s text, Rabelais and His World. Seeking to identi-fy these idealised Bakhtinian activities in alternative surroundings, dis-tanced from yet connected to the medieval Christian world of Rabelais.

A wide and inclusive approach is adopted in the choice of sources and subject: celebration community, transgressions, rituals and the human behaviours associated with these states become the setting, the charac-ters and the nourishment attendant at this carnival of production.

With a particular focus on a conceived archetype of the Fat Man, Julia

Hayes plays out an awkward contemporary relationship with Fatness and embraces him as an ambiguous and ambivalent carnival figure.

Particular features are picked out, often imagined as vulgar, bawdy, and clown like figures. The figures are enacting scenes that enable a ‘revo-lutionary power’ of laughter. They become a hybrid portrait of humanity unified in the process of the creation of community celebration. This dis-play becomes an amalgamation of her enthusiasm and measured satire directed at festive human behaviour and all it’s excesses, indiscretions and impoliteness.

Julia Hayes graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2012. She has re-cently exhibited with Limoncello and the Pump House Gallery, Battersea and she has produced performance pieces that have been presented at Ceri Hand Gallery and Winter Projects in London.

Bartholomew Fair, Smithfield 1808, Thomas Rowlandson

My work examines how the ambiguous qualities associated with The Fat Man emerge in our collective cultural conscious. ‘The Feast of the Fat Man’, an event staged in 2010, asked assembled guests to embody the spirit of The Fat Man and feast without restraint. Later I produced a short folk play, entitled the ‘Tale of The Fat Man’. It presented a significant moment in the life of The Fat Man, his death and resurrection. This artistic project has also been sustained through a painterly interest in the fluid rendering of his physicality, as well as the dramatic, comic possibilities of his character and satirical potential of a powerful political Fat Man in a time of austerity. This year at the Winter Projects space I created a game, based on a medieval idea of the wheel of fortune but also pitting the two seasons of carnival and lent against each other.

In 2009, I belonged to a performance art collective known as The Folkloric and Artistic Troupe of Dharlaristan. Our work examined cultural heritage through a devised tradition.

The Feast of the Fat Man, a meal of excessive propotions staged at RCA December 2010

Julia Hayes CV

Education2010 - 2012 Royal College of Art, London2001 - 2004 Camberwell College of Art, London,

Group Exhibitions2013 Summer Fete Ceri Hand Gallery, London 2013 ‘Take Me Out’ Limoncello presentation at London Art Fair 2012 Peckham Cultural Olympiad, The Last Refuge, London 2012 Merthyr Rising, collaboration with Dan Rees, New Galerie Paris2011 I’m Keeping These Arseholes, Elizabeth House, London 2011 Future Pump House, The Pump House Gallery, London2011 Interim Show, Royal College of Art, London 2009 231, Greaferstr 8, Berlin,2009 There’s Something I’d Like to Tell You, IMA Village Galleries, Berlin,

Solo Exhibitions2013 Game of Seasonal Supremacy, Winter Projects, London.2006 The Excess of the Carnival, Muse at 269 Gallery, London2005 The Mask Series, Muse at 269 Gallery, London

Performance 2012 ‘The Fat Man’s statement to the House’ – The Bedwyr Williams Award for Humorous Performance, (Shortlisted) event staged on occasion of the opening of ‘Dear Both’ Ceri Hand Gallery.2012 The Tale of the Most Awesome, Most Corpulent Gracious Gourmand, the stout and Bold, Fat Man, The Celebrant his Death and Resurrection. A Mummers play, RCA London.2010 The Feast of the Fat Man, Sackler Building RCA London 2009 Member of collaborative performance group, the Folkloric and Artistic Group of Dhalaristan. Based in Berlin, Germany

Artist in Residence 2011 Jan – April Cite International des Arts, Paris, Three months studio residency Awards Shortlisted for the Deutsche Bank Award Shortlisted Bloomberg New Contemporaries

The Game Of Seasonal Supremacy 2013

Dharlaristan, 2009 Berlin

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The initial ideas for this project were born out of a sustained artistic interest in identifying carnivalesque behavioural codes in British folk culture. The markets that will be the venues for this festival of mummers’ plays have a long history dating back to the Middle Ages. The market places that they occupied played host to some of London’s most notorious fairs where travellers came to trade, to witness popular theatre and to celebrate without restraint. These markets and fairs included Southwark Fair, Bartholomew Fair and St James’ Fair. The fair’s simultaneous functions of pleasure and trade for the most part co-existed har-moniously until it was perceived in the 19th century that the boundaries should be drawn between these activities as the revelry begins to outgrow the economic function. Then fairs were suppressed leaving what we know of the markets to-day: large, serious and economic entities.

The Proposal

I have been developing a project that examines the historic links between performance and the Market place. My proposed project would aim to harness the topology of the market hall or square, configured as sort of amphitheatre. My practice includes the production of dramatic pieces that playfully depict the chronicles of The Fat Man, a conceived legendary figure that is central to my practice. London’s ancient markets have a history of combining the commercial activities with sideshows, puppetry and popular play. I would like to draw on this legacy and present the Fat Man to the local community. This archetype, which I regularly return to in my practice, has provided inspiration in the creation of installation, painting and performance. My focus on this figure has become an attempt to create a folk hero and one that I would like to develop in a contemporary market context.

I hope to produce a number of live dramatic presentations that will employ the mode of the folk or mummers play. Through careful planning and researching I will select an appropriate location, drawn from one of the many thriving and busy markets in East London. I would distribute the largest portion of the award to this project across a budget including actors’ fees, material, audiovisual equipment and location hire or fees. My studio practice is central to this project, here I create a diverse and ambitious range of costumes, props, banners and installation.

I’m interested in narrative and the development of archetypes. The Fat Man, a character I have worked with repeatedly across my prac-tice, will play a central role but other constructed archetypes will grow out of these narratives, evidence in folklore and literature figures such as the Wild Woman and the pubescent boy; liminal characters that hover across boundaries of social structures.

I am ambitious to scale up the dimensions of the physical elements of this performance. By increase the capacity of what I’m able to produce in my studio. I’m like to invest in an equipped work bench to help me achieve a greater quality of wood work as integral to my practice. I’d like my costumes to reflect this up-scaleing and use a varied and complex range of materials.

Billingsgate Market Smithfield Market Chrisp Street Market

The Tale of the Most Awesome, Most Corpulent, Gracious Gourmand, The Stout and Bold,Der Großeßteßt Fat Man The Celebrant and His Death and Resurrection;’ A Mummers Play, July 2012

I first encountered mummers’ plays in my hometown of Bury, Lan-cashire where a troupe of players, known as ‘Pace Eggers’ play out the heroic tale of St George every Easter. Mummers are made up of around eight amateur actors. They rely on their bold un-am-plified voices to attract the attention of the passing trade and are dressed in carnival costumes. I would like to adopt and update this simple performative format to plot a history and identify a sense of English national identity.

Drawing on my own artistic research in folk culture and the carni-valesque , I want to create an event that focuses attention on the richness of folk performance and storytelling, the fascinating his-tory of London’s markets and the creativity of the everyday.

Julia Hayes, The Terrific Potential of Wallace, Watercolour on paper, 30 x 20 cm, 2013

The State Apartments at Windsor Castle.

A Pamplet for Breakfast

I’d like to produce a book containing text and images with a linear narrative derived from my wider ‘Fat Man’ project. The booklet takes seven steps or ablutions leading up to the Fat Man’s Breakfast. Each of these seven steps is described in almost excessive detail and will describe the opulent apartments of the setting. The text will be ac-companied by a series of images that will make subliminal inferenc-es to a building up of potential, leading to an explosion.

I intend to employ high production values, enclosing the printed text in a latex envelope. I anticipate that the episodic nature of this seven chaptered booklet will become a format for performances, photographs and film.

The word ‘Breakfast’ means literally to break your fast. It therefore connects through oppositional duality to the struggle between lent and carnival, fat against thin. The Fat man’s character often takes many forms, from jolly local butcher to the Gargan-tua of Rabelais’ 16th century novel. By creating a setting in a palace as great as Ver-sailles or Windsor I hope to position him along side the worst excesses of monarchy in history and revel in the visceral possibilities of his quotidian ceremony.

Above: Participants in a Mummers Play,, featuring the characters: Scot and Scars, the Doctor, St

George, Bold Slasher, grandfather Christmas, Johnny Jack and the Turkish Knight.

Budget Item Unit Unit cost Amount Sub Total

Play

Actors per day £70 4 days x 4 actors £1120

Materials

Costumes 750

Props scenery 200

Workshop devel-opment

275

Venue hire per session £125 3 375

Fees for public performance costs inc insur-ance.

550

Documentation

Film maker edit

per performance £150 £50

11/2 day

15050

Printing costs - Advocacy and publicity

80

Pamphlet publi-cationLatex envelope

per copy £18.50

£12.00

40 740

480

Postal costs of distribution

per batch 10 6 £60

Contingency £170

Total £5000