Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
The Shop at Bluebird, King’s Road, London
24 March – 2 April
Reviewed by: Emilia Telese
“Sorry I kept you waiting, Channel 4 was filming us for a documentary on erotomania. Do you know what that means?” With these words to start our rendezvous, I am led by US-born artist Kathe Izzo into the ‘Public Love Project’, a performance/installation built in a secluded mini-boudoir space inside the achingly trendy Shop @ Bluebird, the Conran-owned concept store. This is the first show in the ‘True Love Project’, a series of six performances in which the artist commits to live and love in a public space with different individuals of any age, race, sexuality and gender from around the world. This time Izzo has collaborated with Cardiff-based performance artist Paul Hurley, sharing every waking and sleeping hour with him “practising and nurturing their love for each other”.
Waiting for the artist in a red silk satin armchair, I see books on love on a heart-shaped pouf, fresh flowers and dying ones, almost an allegory of Love itself. Luxurious candles and sweets are scattered on the dark wood dresser, while numerous photos of people – men, women, young, old – who have entered the space for “private love appointments” line the inside and outside walls.
Being a believer of love – and a fellow Italian – I can see different kinds of it at play: self-love, remembered love, indulgent, fugitive love. Rather than a ‘loveshack’ it seems more like a ‘love greenhouse’ where both artists are forced to face themselves and each other in heightened, focused circumstances, and love ‘grows’ almost artificially, but with genuine and positive intentions. Talking to Kathe, she admits that the ‘Public Love Project’ has helped her love herself more as a person and to reflect on the relationships in her life.
Sitting with Paul and Kathe together in front of me, I was almost expecting a John-and-Yoko style universal love declaration, but I am told this is more about private love than what the title of the piece suggests. And yet this reminds me that any form of love has the potential to be a positive force in the world. I must be an erotomaniac...
Writer detail:
Emilia Telese is an artist and is currently in love. She is Artists’ Networks Coordinator at a-n.
Venue detail:
TRUE LOVE PROJECT
, LONDON
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