Output details

SHIFTwork: Cathedral of Joy

SHIFTwork is a series of performances that focused on the physical act and process of painting as a form of performance art. The series involved two collaborations and one solo work. Stitt conceived and designed the project. The contribution of collaborators Fritz Welsh (New York) and Tony Schwensen (Campbelltown, Australia) was to introduce the dimension of a working partnership. The principal publication is the book SHIFTwork: Cathedral of Joy. This series of works investigated through ‘live’ performance, informed by historical context, how contemporary painting practice and performance are interrelated. The project investigated work, labour, duration, and social context through a continuous twenty-four hour seven-day performance. The first work, ‘Cathedral of Joy’, with Fritz Welsh, was a series of paintings produced live in full view of the public whereby the gallery became a public studio revealing in real time and on continuous webcam transmission what is ordinarily the private practice of painting. The work was left as an installation consisting of seven large paintings that acted as a document of the work process. In exposing the working process and framing it as a performance the project illuminated areas of activity previously withheld from public scrutiny. In providing a social and cultural context for the performance attention was drawn to painting as a labour-intensive activity with the artist as cultural worker. The project was also developed as a commission, entitled ‘Big Pinko’, by Campbelltown Arts Centre in Australia, with Tony Schwensen, and as a performance, called ‘Post-Gutai-Cluster-Fuck’, for 5th World Ceramics Biennale, Icheon, Korea, documented in the Korean Ceramic 2009 Biennale catalogue.