The Parlour Room-Keening After Things
Deej Fabyc
Deej Fabyc
The Parlour Room-Keening After Things (2006)
Deej Fabyc works in live art, video, sculpture/installation, painting
and photography. Her latest work at Elastic Residence is a performance
installation spanning over three weekends. The Parlour Room-Keening After
Things deals with many of the themes previously explored by the artist,
most notably those of autobiography and death, and features the body laid
out as though dead something that has appeared with regularity throughout
her oeuvre.
Fabyc’s recent performances such as And She Watched and Pisstake
have presented the body in a more clinical environment. In And She Watched
a cast of the artist’s body was laid out on a steel slab and underwent
a “pseudo-forensic” examination in a room with white walls
while Pisstake, records the artist’s journey across London to St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, with two one-gallon containers of her urine.
But Fabyc’s latest work brings the recurring subject of death and
the body into a more private arena; that of the parlour, or front room
of a house. In The Parlour Room- Keening After Things (2006), Fabyc thus
moves away from the theme of “medical surveillance” and presents
the body in the more personal domain of the home. As in The Parlour Room
a Two Way Mirror Affair (1994), in which we encountered a body dressed
in red and placed on a mortuary slab, we once again come across the laid
out body in The Parlour Room- Keening After Things. But while the earlier
work deliberately invoked both the funeral and the massage parlour, Fabyc’s
latest work refers to the parlour as the guest room of the family home
and in an environment reminiscent of a traditional wake, the artist explores
the rituals around death the deceased, rituals that are fast disappearing
as we become increasingly disassociated with death and dying.
“Part classical tableau, part personal pinboard, Fabyc’s semiotic
surfeit is alternately public and private in its revelations”. (Gibson)
The audience is invited into the parlour populated by a version of the
artist, laid out as though dead, and two mannequins representing her parents
when they were children. In the dialogue and interaction with her dead
parents, the artist attempts to investigate her own history and to trace
the family tree.
Having spent years in Sydney and now back in London Deej curates work
at Elastic Residence in London and teaches at Newport School of Art in
South Wales. She has presented work in exhibitions and performance at
major galleries in Australia and Europe. She has recently exhibited at
Castlefield gallery in Manchester and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid
Please Note on the opening day the artist will perform from 4-6 pm and then be available to sign copys of her recent monograph "Handle on Nowhere" to be officially launched at 6.30 pm
"Handle on Nowhere" available for only £5
Deej Fabyc
18 November- 3 December 2006
Opening Saturday 18 November
4 to 8pm
Thereafter Open
Saturday 1-6
Sunday 1-6
and by appointment:
