Edtaonisl

at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London (21/2/08 - 8/3/08)

An unseen assailant inflicts multiple blows on a victim who cannot fight back

A female cult leader exhorts potential acolytes to follow her impossible call

A passion too great to endure generates the knowledge it can never be fulfilled

On board an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic, Francis Picabia observed a priest engrossed in a dancer’s self-absorbed rehearsals. The eventual result was a masterpiece of modern art, Edtaonisl, now hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago. This tale, this rumour, was the inspiration for Georgia Sagri’s performances in the gallery. The threads that unite the three performances are entangled but knit together to fashion an emotional and intellectual whole. The intensity generated by Sagri’s work is hard to absorb. The relationship between viewer and artist gives birth to a new subject, absent without the meeting of the participants but more real an experience than either party could recognise alone. This, in the end, is the nature of art. And this is live. It owes much to theatre, to dance, to music but is, in the end, supremely visual; visual in its exposure of the inadequacy of language. At the age of 21, Sagri was awarded the 2001 Deste Foundation prize. Her physicality, her willingness to take risks and her ability to compromise emotional stability have brought her attention on both sides of the Atlantic. Sagri’s performance at the recent Athens Biennale was one of the most memorable works in a bold and successful exhibition. One after the other, an audience of one was isolated and told a story, a story of a crime of passion, told in a language most could not understand, in a manner that rendered them complicit, ether as perpetrator or victim. The experience was devastating. Of the three performances at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery, one, repeated again and again, will likewise be for an audience of one. The numbers able to experience her work on this occasion were extremely limited. In each case, the work was also filmed and the camera is a participant in the performance. The film then became the final element of the work. One performance took place on each of three days, 21/22/23 February. Their record remained in the gallery for ten days. The audience was on a first-come, first-served basis.

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