Binding, Refining, Dissolving 2006

Performed at Can You Eat it, Stroud House Gallery, Stroud, 3rd June 2006.

Sugar-plate, tea, icing sugar, sugar cubes, paper, stools.

Live performance: 25 minutes

Photography: Charlotte Couch

The lights go up to illuminate a diminutive female figure sat alone in the middle of a white room. She is dressed in a delicate white paper dress, her face and exposed skin is ‘made up’ with a dusting of white powdered sugar. She is sat on a small white chair with a small white tea table next to her. The table holds a white teapot, sugar bowl, a cup and saucer. The tea set is made of white sugar icing.

She begins her ritual of taking tea. Pouring the tea in to the cup and adding her desired number of sugars to taste. She begins to sip the tea. Slowly at first, then, as the performance continues, with a little less manners…

We will watch her elegantly balance the sticky cup between thumb and second finger, then spill it as she sips, following the streaks and dribbles down her powdery chin and breasts. Rapidly, refinement and control is licked away along with the cup’s sticky glaze and she begins to bite into the fragile teacup, savagely crunching the brittle sugar with her teeth. Biting, breaking, licking, dissolving, paying particular attention to each of the individual broken pieces, she starts to form a drawing from the shapes on her sodden lap.