Holly Slingsby: PROPS FOR THE SKY 

Private view: 20 January 2012, 6-9pm 

21-22 January 2012, 12-6pm 

SHIFT. 32 Shelmerdine Close, London, E3 4UX 

PROPS FOR THE SKY is a new performance work by Holly Slingsby, taking place over three days at SHIFT. 

In this work the artist takes on the guise of a series of gods and mythical characters, using improvised costumes and props. As the performance progresses, these deities make and remake themselves, producing a series of hybrids – gods with vanity problems, gender confusion and split personalities.  

The setting is an artist’s studio, providing the means for these protagonists to create new attributes and appearances for themselves, as well as referencing the idea of the studio as a pseudo-sacred space, where something miraculous or alchemical can take place.

Through this work Slingsby deepens her fascination with iconography from various religious and pagan traditions, exploring how images and figures cross-fertilise and later come to be subsumed into contemporary culture. Using everyday materials to evoke the divine, she interrogates our continuing attempts to envisage the invisible.

video available here...

http://vimeo.com/36654203