Alternative Exhibition Tours

June 2007          Wimbledon College of Art

This performance piece by Phoebe Davies drew on notions of unease in social situations and attempted to subvert people's expectations of normality and the experience of looking at works of art.

It began with a tour of the college's Degree Show, but took participants to unusual and hidden spaces instead. In these spaces they discovered performers, using the shared motif of 'awkward movements' around the neck area. The performance had a cumulative effect of increasing unease, by introducing strange elements and then playing with people's anticipation of the strange.

There was also a delicate thread of narrative spun through the tour, where the audience was made aware of a locker and the combination to its padlock. At the end of the tour, the audience was invited to take a letter from inside the locker - some letters had further instructions for a future performance, some explained the current performance and some were more abstract and nonsensical - again playing with Davies's interest in chance and surprise.

See here for more information on Phoebe Davies and her work.