TRADING GESTURES | MOTION IN MATERIAL FORM addresses the theme of movement through a collaborative project with four strands in print, photography, performance and participation. These four strands consisted of two publications, pinhole exposures documenting live performance and participative pinhole workshops for Tate audiences.

 

When considering movement, ‘slowness’ became pivotal in the project development. Motion and gesture are powerful means of evoking memories and emotion, and so processes of dance and muscle memory can provide ways in to sensing the individual and the collective. Dan Graham’s performance ‘Past Future Split Attention’ at Lisson Gallery, 1972 acted as an important reference for the collaboration.

 

Pin-hole exposures capture the developing dialogue between artist and performer as they move, replicate and communicate through dance. This exploration of sculpting movements cast onto photographic paper through pin-hole exposure functions as a vessel where bodies negotiate and exchange movement through touch, weight, rhythm and pace. The final conversation was a live performance in Tate Exchange documented through film.

 

Exposure signifies the ‘laying open’, vulnerability and uncovering of a surface. Throughout the project each element antagonises and agitates collective and solitary motility, treading this measurement in LUX seconds and the production of written work.

 

Publication 1 examines slowness as a symptom of movement through a collection of short texts and an introductive essay forming the beginnings of our conversation. Publication 2 will reproduce visual documentation from film stills and photographic prints taken throughout the collaboration. The publication presents these alongside a poetry series produced from both artists and developed in response to the three other project strands. 

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Ruby Maddock is a writer and performer based in London. Her practice centres around poetry and communicating and exploring lived experiences of mental health, family bonds and self-exploration. A self-taught dancer (movement addict) she has most recently performed at the Late at Tate Britain.

 

Catriona Whiteford (b.1985) lives and works in London and received her B.A. Honours Fine Art and Master of Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Scotland. She works primarily in sculpture, print, photography and text where forms of memory-work are central, exploring the relationship between absence and presence, the intimate and the public.

Catriona has been a co-director and committee member of various artist collectives, curating and project managing exhibitions, workshops and artist commissions