Output details

Observance

Observance is a video of a performance staged within the exhibition Radical Nature at the Barbican Art Gallery London, 1st October 2009, funded by ACE. The work has been available @ http://benjudd.com/video-and-performance/observance-2009/ since November 2009, was shown at a Pagan Federation conference in 2011 and exhibited in a one-man show in 2012.

Actors carried out a Wiccan ritual, to a script developed by Judd in consultation with two practicing Wiccans as advisors and choreographers, in which they responded to the works in Radical Nature, incorporating them as talismanic objects. The exhibition, an important historical survey exploring artists use of nature to create utopian works for a changing planet, included pieces by Haans Hacke, Joseph Beuys, Robert Smithson, Simon Starling, Anya Gallaccio. The performance continued Judd’s series of simulations of the ritual activities of occult groups, explored in The Brotherhood of Subterranea.

The event explored the blurred boundary between performance and ritual (also realised by artists including Marcus Coates, Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley), and the parallels between the production of art and occult practices. Magic is used in witchcraft to apparently bring about transformation; similarly the process of making and viewing art could be seen as a magical one, in which objects, images and ideas become transformed, largely through the mutual belief of the artist and viewer. The performance was facilitated by Ariella Yedgar, curator at The Barbican Art Gallery.

Judd’s first performance using actors, Observance was the precursor to an ongoing series of performances in which actors simulate particular gatherings of occult groups, including the Arts Council England-funded Concerning the Difference Between the Delights of Pleasure and True Happiness.

Articles / features / reviews: Metamorphoses and Transgressions and Being in Two Minds in Ben Judd: Communion, Black Dog Publishing, (2013)