INTRODUCTION

When I think of performance,

I hear the curtain call,

I feel the anticipation,

I am the nerves.

Performance can illuminate the most amazing feelings within a person and give them the chance to feel everything...

Where do the boundaries begin and end; I aim to investigate these boundaries and to explore the ways in which visual artists use performance to create pieces of work which reside in the cannon of art.

As a visual artist and a drama student I have a particular interest in the subject.

For my A2 Unit 3 I intend to build on AS level research into artists whose work is performative, for example Marina Abramović and Janet Cardiff & Georges Bures Miller.

Twentieth century art has increasingly seen the artists body used as both the subject and object of artists' work. Bound or beaten, naked or painted, still or spasmodic: the body is presented in all possible guises, as the artist quite literally lives his or her art publicly, in performances, or privately, video and photography. Expanding an renewing the age-old tradition of self-portrature, body and performance artists are part of the tradition of artists moving art out of the gallery, into unexpected spaces and media. Breaking down the barriers between art and life, visual experience and sensual experience, these artists well represent the sense of angst and individual disorientation at the close of the twentieth-century.  Phaidon Press, (April 2, 2012), p.1 The Artists Body.