Browsing Archive: May, 2013
Posted by Tom Estes on Saturday, May 4, 2013,
Man With A Camera- Tom Estes in performance/ talk at the event Beg, Borrow, Steal at Dilston Grove Saturday, April 27, 2013.
" A programme of live art at CGP London Dilston Grove featuring a host of artists from dark corners, glittery stages, white-walled galleries and gravelly gutters. For centuries, it has been widely recognised that many who create that anomaly known as "art" may well be looked upon as outsiders, deviants, depraved or mad ...and vice versa. BEG, BORROW, STEAL will call upo... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Saturday, May 4, 2013,
For his Live Art Performance SPAM at The London Art Fair artist Tom Estes fell asleep while wearing the mask of a protocol droid.
In Estes' work, audience members are asked to interact with the performance by taking pictures on what the artist calls a "communal camera". The pictures are then posted on social networking sites for another, wider on-line audience. This is what Estes refers to as 'Harnessing The Hive' - as the view of the central performance is mediated and digitally recorded thro... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Saturday, May 4, 2013,
Live Art Performance 'Crash Test Dummy' by Tom Estes, Part of Health & Safety Violation: A collaboration between Ben Woodeson and Tom Estes
Health & Safety Violation is a project initiated at Lubomirov-Easton which brought together performance artist Tom Estes and sculptor Ben Woodeson in an experimental collaboration; neither knowing exactly what would happen. The Health & Safety Violation collaboration was an evolving experiment documented by visitors to the exhibition; ephemeral performance... Continue reading ...
As an artist I have always leaned toward making Live Art performance work that is participatory or immersive in some way. In my Live Art performance I stage an 'action' and then ask members of the audience to take pictures on a communal camera. In this way, the audience becomes part of the performance, and the pictures are then posted on on-line social networking sites and web sites for another, wider on-line audience.
For me, fantasy and illusion are not contradictions of reality, but instead an integral part of our everyday lives. There is a real Peter Pan Syndrome at play in my work and I suppose I would consider myself to be a carnival sideshow conceptualist, combining a bare-bones formal conceptualism with an eternally adolescent, prank DIY comic-approach.
At the core of this work is an attention to the flickering, fading definition of our lives as dictated by the computer monitor and the rapid reply of instant messaging. I strive, not to break down these introverted, often self-imposed boundaries, but to look at how dataflow from the virtual realm impacts on the significance and symbolism of real-world human senses. But in doing so, I have begun to generate unexpected questions about how art might be able to inscribe itself on the surface of reality- not to represent itself on the surface of reality –not to represent reality, nor to duplicate it, but to replace it.
