Intimations of Abfall

Works & Texts by Stuart Brisley
1960 - 2000


Selected and Invigilated by R. Y. Sirb
Curator of Ordure
www.ordure.org

Open to the public
Each Friday, Saturday & Sunday between 13:00 & 18:00
from 17th November to 10th December

Notes for Intimations of Abfall – R.Y. Sirb

Cultural vocation can be incompatible with a consistent practice. Within a context where careers are determined by the market, commercial inactivity predicates artistic invisibility. Hence the radical practice of Stuart Brisley can appear to be overlooked despite the manifest influence – not least in terms of a focus on the human body and the body politic – that his work has exerted.

This small selection of work from 1960 to the present is concerned with the expressive power of Brisley's oeuvre and focuses on works where the human body, albeit sited in conditions of degradation, articulates involuntary expressions of being alive.

A recognition of his involvement with performance since 1966 is provided by the photograph Schreiende Scheiss (2000). The earliest piece Black Midnight/Noon Relief (1960) examines the notion of painting as object conected to body and ground. This piece stemmed from a long study of the human figure and from an engagement with material as subject, concerns relevant to the painting Mairead Farrell, Dirty Protest (1995) and to Pinpointing Ordure (2000) which concentrates on the breakdown of ordure into universally distributed particles (from shit to nosodes, the homeopathic extract from excreta).