Tom Estes

Cake Hole

On Sunday the 5th of December 2010 I presented the Live Art Performance 'Cake Hole' in 'Performance All Weekender' (as part of Sideshow, at The British Art Show, Nottingham).

In this performance I cut holes in donuts. The audience is asked to photograph the performance and later are invited to eat the donuts.

The British Art Show (BAS) is a major survey exhibition organised every five years to showcase contemporary British Art. The 39 selected artists have been chosen on the grounds of their significant contribution to contemporary art in the last five years. The exhibition is normally selected by three people who are appointed for their knowledge of contemporary art, Previously these had been artists and critics but more recently they have been selected from curators.This years British Art Show is the 7th reincarnation of the major exhibition by the Hayward Touring. Co-ordinated by Jennie Syson, Sideshow 2010 has various commissioned projects (supported by the Arts Council and Nottingham Visual Arts) across the city.

Sideshow, which runs parallel to The British Art Show, encompasses the fringe artist-led sector of the independent, do-it-yourself approach that the Nottingham contemporary art network is so known for. On Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th December, at the 'Performance All Weekender' (as part of Sideshow, at The British Art Show) One Finch presented a selection of some of the best national and international performance artists.

Media Kunst

Netherlands Media Art Institute NIMk

In the Live Art Performance 'MEDIA KUNST' Artist Tom Estes' aims to challenge the conventional presentation of audience participation in a Museum and Gallery.

For this intervention I attempted to critically examine the role of art in social change taking forward the idea that subversion, is a democratic act that constitutes a cornerstone of democratic society. The relationship between socio-political critique and art practice characterizes much of my work, and for this project I decided to look at social engagement and to find a practical application in order to critique that process. My performance work to date has examined the relationship between work and play, professionalism and amateurism, institutional hegemony and self-organization. In this instance, it found expression through a readily available mode- by creating a clandestine performance at the event ‘Technology Required’.

Reformulating the functions of a public space, I use direct and self-managed participation to enter and directly reflect and catalogue the public's relationship to the art project. The work is then re-circulated as a video, using the internet as a platform to demonstrate the existence of an alternative point of view.

For this intervention I attempted to critically examine the role of art in social change.The relationship between socio-political critique and art practice characterizes much of my work, and for this project I decided to look at social engagement and to find a practical application in order to critique that process. My performance work to date has examined the relationship between work and play, professionalism and amateurism, institutional hegemony and self-organization. In this instance, it found expression through a readily available mode- as a special last minute addition to the closing event for RELLA.

Bake'in

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 Tom 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 exhibition could purchase tea and cake while watching.