Posted by Tom Estes on Saturday, August 22, 2015,
In :
Malta
Tom Estes Live Art Performance: The Anomaly outside the Co-Cathedral of St. John, Valletta. The most famous artist who worked in Malta has to be Caravaggio. His 'work is on display inside, the Oratory of the Co-Cathedral of St. John, Valletta. However, while in Malta, Caravaggio was imprisoned in Fort St. Angelo (accused of sodomy) and later escaped to Sicily, only to die two years later at the age of 38 still hounded by the forces of justice.I created this character ‘The Bell Ringer’ for... Continue reading ...
Emoticon @ The Encyclopedic Palace, La Biennale di Venezia 2013 for The Biennial Project
http://www.the-biennial-project.com/VB2013Accepted.aspxYou’ve definitely seen it at some point. Maybe it was in a lecture in college. Maybe it was in a TED talk you watched recently. Someone is trying to explain some important historical connection, drawing up a grand theory of art or science or human progress, and there it is, as if by reflex: the hand lifts in front of them like an upturned claw, the f... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Saturday, August 22, 2015,
Live Art Performance EMOTICON by Tom Estes for Communication Futures at The Old Royal Naval College during DRHA 2014. Monday September 1sthttp://www.drha2014.co.uk/?cat=12.
You’ve definitely seen it at some point. Maybe it was in a lecture in college. Maybe it was in a TED talk you watched recently. Someone is trying to explain some important historical connection, drawing up a grand theory of art or science or human progress, and there it is, as if by reflex: the hand lifts in front of them... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Thursday, September 5, 2013,
Through this new performance work artist Tom Estes expands on some of the issues
explored in a new report from the United Nations Human Rights Commission which suggests
that weapons systems that can attack targets without any human input need to be regulated.
Airborne drones are becomin especially in the military. A new report from the
United Nations Human Rights Commission suggests that lethal autonomous robots need to be
regulated before they become the military weapons of the future. The repor...
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Posted by Tom Estes on Friday, June 14, 2013,
Emoticon
by Tom Estes
Portrait of Modern Movement
Visual Collective Space,
10 Vyner Street
London E2 9DG
www.thevisualcollective.co.uk
www.artpendeo.co.uk
As much as 90% of human communication is
done without words. Gestures, facial expressions, and posture provide
information about a person's emotions and relationships with others. People
often hold their hands near their faces as a gesture in natural conversation. You’ve definitely seen it at some point. Maybe it was in a
lecture in coll...
Continue reading ...
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 ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Friday, November 16, 2012,
In the performance CAKE HOLE artist Tom Estes cuts holes in donuts while members of the audience take pictures on a communal camera that is passed around.
The simple act of cutting holes in donuts or 'punching holes in donuts' is based on a slang term in activist circles meaning doing something that has little or no real impact. The title of the work is also from a slang term. Generally expressed as ‘shut your cakehole’ it means ‘shut up and keep your opinions to yourself’.
As an artis... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Friday, October 19, 2012,
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art One- Tom Estes- Portable Black Hole, June 8th 2012 Remember the Road Runner Show? Simple in its premise, the Road Runner, a flightless cartoon bird, is chased down the highways of the south western United States by a hungry cartoon coyote, named Wile E. Coyote (a pun on "wily coyote"). Despite numerous clever attempts, and the use of a variety of ludicrous devices from that fictitious mail-order company ACME, Wile E. Coyote never catches or kills the R... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Friday, October 19, 2012,
Portable Black Hole-Live Art Guerrilla Action by Tom Estes at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - NYC. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (often referred to as "The Guggenheim") is a well-known museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. However, while most have heard of Frank Lloyd Wright and Solomon R. Guggenheim few people are familiar with the name Hilla Rebay as she has largely been written out of the history of the museum. Hilla Rabey was a collector and first director of The Museum of Non-Ob... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Thursday, October 18, 2012,
Tower Hamlets Spring Open- Scale and Place
Mile End Art Pavilion
Selected by Rise Art and ALISN
Artists Reception: Wednesday 28 March 6-9pm
Exhibition Continues: 30 March - 7 April
Gallery Open: Mon-Fri 2-6pm, Sat-Sun 12-6pm
Tom Estes | Felicity Hammond | Rab Harling | Brian D Hodgson | Thorsten Knaub | Gina Lundy | Patrick Morrissey | Minou Norouzi | Emer O'Brien | Daniel Shanken | Rachel Wilberforce | Mary Yacoob
For the second annual Tower Hamlets Spring Open, ALISN and Rise Art invited artists... Continue reading ...
Venice is flooded
Swampy: Venice is Flooded - Live Art Guerrilla Action as part of 'Bizzare Artist Happenings' with The Biennial Project (as featured by Tate Shots at The 54th Venice Bienniale)
On the 7th of June 2011, the waters of the lagoon rose up and flooded Venice. As the waters rose, a strange creature appeared out of nowhere, and climbed the steps up from the Lagoon and entered the Giardini while the Venice Biennale was taking place...
Through the Live Art Performance 'Swampy', ar...
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Night Cleaning at 'Vanishing Point' at Elevator Gallery
from Friday the 29th of October until the 14th of November 2010.
For most artists, presence of an identifiable artwork be it object or sound, is of utmost importance, but for Vanishing Point the curators have invited artists to make work that is either hidden, discreet, or at the cusp of vanishing. The white walled space of the gallery appears at first glance to be just itself; an empty white space, but it houses the work of 50 contempora... Continue reading ...
Tom Estes in Sewing Performance for The Really, Really Free Market (RRFM), a 3-day market organised as Post-Museum's contribution to No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents, held in Tate Modern."This sewing performance was intended as a viral extension of a performance created as the culmination of a residency at Trinity Buoy Wharf. The work was conceived in relation to the site of Trinity Buoy Wharf- a place of both extreme poverty and extreme wealth; of crumbling and overgrown Docks,... Continue reading ...
The work of artist Tom Estes at WW Gallery Drink & Dial exhibition 27 Mar - 6 May 2010
For the WW Gallery Artist Tom Estes created a Drink and Dial Hotline complete with printed cards to hand out and telephone line to call. Estes' DRINK & DIAL HOTLINE taps into the talismanic use of the mobile phone that expresses a feeling of both sentimental and implicitly magical: the attempt to contact or lay claiim to another space, another reality. As they say "Many a true word is spoken in jest" and i... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Tuesday, June 5, 2012,
Tom Estes' video Bake'in was shown on April 11th, 2010, as an interventionist critique at the closing event for RELLA, an event organised as part of Testbed 1 at Beaconsfield.
At this event Estes' contribution was this video performance of himself baking a cake while watching the film, The Exorcist. The work was shown on a loop, and through a conversation with co-curators Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning it was decided to stage the work in Canteen Gallery 2 so that visitors invited to the e... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Estes on Tuesday, June 5, 2012,
In 2008 Estes premiered his work 'Rejuvenation'' at The RVC exhibition 'Lust & Luxuria' as part of The Whitechapel Gallery, Late Nghts.
'Rejuvenation'' is a 'found object' originally marketed under the aegis of 'Health and Beauty'. While the face of the mask exhibits a kind of hieratic calm, on the back are tiny metal nodules that send electric currents into the face of the wearer. Estes has further highlighted the sado-masochistic element of the object by displaying it in a slightly downwar... Continue reading ...
Tom Estes ~ Gallery interaction~ The De La Warr Pavilion, 29th of August, 2010"I have been collecting newspaper articles for about twenty years. Basically it’s a bit autobiographical as the collection is made up of things I have found of interest or things that I like or think are funny. I use to put them into drawers and then bin liners but now I have so many clippings now that I have started to put them into ring binder folders with plastic sleeves. I guess it probably seems a bit mad, as... Continue reading ...
Tom Estes in Sewing Performance, Trinity Buoy Wharf
"This ‘Sewing Performance’ was created as the culmination of a residency at Trinity Buoy Wharf. In this work I gently embroider leaves and vines onto a bespoke or tailor- made suit, causing a dimpling of the material. This sewing has the effect of slowly shrivelling the arms and legs of the suit. So in a way the work is really about being powerless in the face of exploitation and is intended to accentuate a core of wordless confusion and...
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Performance: Yogurt Weaving
Tom Estes’ Performance ‘Yogurt Weaving’ took place on a small hill called 'Dr. Watt’s Mound', the exact same spot where Isaac Watts, recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody" wrote many of his famous hyms (17 July 1674 – 25 November 1748).
Dr. Watts Mound
Isaac Watts was the first prolific and popular English hymnwriter, credited with some 750 hymns. Sacred music scholar Stephen Marini (2003) describes the ways in which Watts contributed to English hymn...
Posted by Tom Estes on Thursday, May 31, 2012,
In :
Cake Hole
On July 17th, 2010, Tom Estes staged the performance ‘Cake Hole’ as a participant in ArtEvict, at The New Lansdowne Club, 195 Mare St. Hackney, London E8
In this performance I cut holes in donuts while members of the audience take pictures on a communal camera that is passed around. The simple act of cutting holes in donuts is based on a slang term in activist circles meaning doing something that has little or no real impact. The title of the work is also from a slang term. Generally exp...
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.
