To hand_Photo by Neil Wissink
To hand (2011)
To hand is a solo performance created by Siobhan Davies and Matthias Sperling.
Commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery, To hand was first performed within Claire Barclay's Shadow Spans installation over four hours a day for a period of three weeks. The work is informed by Davies' and Sperling's engagement with Barclay's installation and the ideas behind her work.
"Matthias and I entered Shadow Spans and like every other visitor, we brought the outside world into the installation. Claire Barclay was ahead of us, she seemed to have relished finding out about how certain objects are crafted and her work already included exquisitely made things, each one re-imagined from activities, structures and materials found in the Whitechapel Gallery's present and historic environment. The individual parts as well as the whole exist in their time and their own variations of completion. Each object invites being looked at.
"Matthias and I have been involved in several processes in order to find the particular durational presence our movement might bring amongst this stillness. We continuously came back to thinking about what Claire must have learnt in order to make her work and we concentrated on finding simple movements that need a complex collection of decisions to make each movement work and be noticed." Siobhan Davies
Performances: Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK) – Claire Barclay: Shadow Spans; What Matters, Independent Dance, Siobhan Davies Studios (London, UK); Turner Contemporary (Margate, UK) – Carl Andre: Mass and Matter; Henry Moore Foundation (Perry Green, UK) – Body & Void: Echoes of Moore in Contemporary Art; Unannounced Acts of Publicness, Granary Square (London, UK)
To hand is also performed as an archival work in each presentation of Table of Contents (2014)
'Siobhan Davies and Matthias Sperling's piece presented a quiet engagement with a lone performer who took an hour to navigate across the square.' Art Monthly
'To hand is not a performance in any theatrical sense: there's no beginning or end, no trajectory. Rather, it is an unobtrusive accompaniment to the installation itself, presented over a period of several hours each day.' Sanjoy Roy, The Guardian
Related:
See more photos of To hand LINK
Read a text by Matthias Sperling on performing To hand in Body & Void at Henry Moore Foundation LINK
See related work To hand, in storage LINK