TORO SPACIO | RONDA | SPAIN | 2018

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British performance artist Clare Carswell made a performance work, BLOW, in response to the exhibition on Friday 29th June. Introducing vivid colour and new air into the space she breathed on each of the paintings or the photographs of Roanne's ancestors and left small pink marks by or on some of the works. The video "Where Did You Go" made by Clare when her own mother died played during the piece with her voice filling the space with those words. Having walked slowly through the gallery stopping at each of Roanne's works, her persona then shifted from statuesque and solitary, not making eye contact with anyone as she performed these actions, to friendly and smiling as she offered her orange rope to Roanne to hold and then invited the audience to hold it too and to follow her out of the gallery and into the street as she sang a refrain from the Scots folk song "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean". The audience included several ex pats who joined in the song. 

Clare says of the experience “Roanne and I are both Celts and share a sense of respect for the struggles our ancestors faced as migrants settling in the British Isles. Both pieces of work, Roanne's exhibition and my performance, act as contemporary response and revelation of a history that is disappearing as well as an homage to our family histories and an affirmation of the bond that she and I share as artists and friends.”

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