John Court [finland]
‘ART TRA’

Sat. 3rd May 2008
duration performance 11.00 - 19.00 • closing action 18.00 - 19.00
installation exhibition 4th - 31st May 2008

‘ART TRA will be a durational piece of 8 hours that expresses physically the frustration and confusion dyslexia causes for me. It will be a continuation of the body of work I have produced over the last ten years as a performance artist using the materials of traditional image making from the history of art: pencils, erasers, paper and paint.
Instead of a conventional statement, I am submitting an illustration of dyslexia: all and any of these permutations of the word “art” can appear to be identical to someone who suffers from dyslexia’

Originally from England John Court has been based in Finland for several years. His work has been exhibited throughout Scandanavia and featured at several prestigious events in Europe including: the Venice Biennale [2005], and the Liverpool Biennale [ 2004]

ART TRA

A Performance by John Court

The performance takes place within the confines of a 240 cm x 500 cm raised platform. I spend the whole 8 hours performance writing on the platform on my knees. I write with my left hand – the opposite hand than I normally use to write. My every day writing hand is immobilized behind my back. I write from right to left, and then left to right, and therefore I am always writing as I am moving. When I finish one layer of writing, I do another layer. Over the time, I cover the platform with linear layers of writing, It all started when I made a statement about my art work, and then proceeded to dissect the statement so I had a number of individual words. The words are separated out and placed at random.
I consider each word as an individual concept in art. I visualize the word then I write it down with my opposite writing hand. I do this because I feel we are so judged by what we say in art - and by dissecting my own art statement, and using the words at random, I am making my own philosophical statement about the validity and weight of those ideas.

John Court
Laivaniemi
February 20th 2008