Francesca Steele
Routine
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performance for audience of one-at-a-time: 7 mins; video documentation above – 4 mins 18 secs – contains nudity
Artist statement from the original Festival website:
I am a live and video artist who has used my own body and presence in numerous works over the last seven years. Throughout this time, my body has changed notably, and so has my relationship to it. Since the beginning of 2009 I have been training as, and becoming, a bodybuilder as part of my artistic practice. I follow a typical bodybuilder’s training regime and diet as art practice – firstly, aiming to redefine and test what we consider the boundaries of art practice to be, and secondly, to use the practice of bodybuilding to change my own physical form, taking it further away from the more conventional female figure – to a modified one. A figure that begins to invade the territory established as masculine beauty.
Throughout this process it is my body that will become the document of my practice. Through performance I aim to question how all these considerations and revisions of the body impact on its presence.”
Francesca Steele is a video and performance artist based in the South West of England. She was awarded the Belsay Hall Fellowship in 2006 and has spent time as artist in residence in various research and medical settings including The Centre for Life and PEALS, in Newcastle, Derriford Hospital Histopathology Department in Plymouth and most recently working with Horticultural Healing for Groundwork South West, an ecotherapy initiative working with individuals with acquired brain injury. As well as the NRLA, Francesca Steele has performed at the Baltic, Gateshead and the Arnolfini, Bristol. She has featured in a range of publications, including The Live Art Almanac(Live Art Development Agency, 2008) and Manuel Vason’s Encounters – performance photography collaboration (Arnolfini 2007).
The first of these works, Routine, is for an audience of one.
Special thanks to Arts Council South West, Stuart Core & Lewis Breed.
Routine
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Artist statement from the original Festival website:
I am a live and video artist who has used my own body and presence in numerous works over the last seven years. Throughout this time, my body has changed notably, and so has my relationship to it. Since the beginning of 2009 I have been training as, and becoming, a bodybuilder as part of my artistic practice. I follow a typical bodybuilder’s training regime and diet as art practice – firstly, aiming to redefine and test what we consider the boundaries of art practice to be, and secondly, to use the practice of bodybuilding to change my own physical form, taking it further away from the more conventional female figure – to a modified one. A figure that begins to invade the territory established as masculine beauty.
Throughout this process it is my body that will become the document of my practice. Through performance I aim to question how all these considerations and revisions of the body impact on its presence.
Francesca Steele is a video and performance artist based in the South West of England. She was awarded the Belsay Hall Fellowship in 2006 and has spent time as artist in residence in various research and medical settings including The Centre for Life and PEALS, in Newcastle, Derriford Hospital Histopathology Department in Plymouth and most recently working with Horticultural Healing for Groundwork South West, an ecotherapy initiative working with individuals with acquired brain injury. As well as the NRLA, Francesca Steele has performed at the Baltic, Gateshead and the Arnolfini, Bristol. She has featured in a range of publications, including The Live Art Almanac (Live Art Development Agency, 2008) and Manuel Vason’s Encounters – performance photography collaboration (Arnolfini 2007).
The first of these works Routine, is for an audience of one.
Special thanks to Arts Council South West, Stuart Core & Lewis Breed.
Francesca Steele blog on Tumbler (log-in required)