The Work of Hayley Newman
Hayley Newman is a London-based artist working in the field of performance. She was recently part of the group exhibition, 'superhero artstaar: beyond good and evil', shown at Gertrude contemporary art spaces in Melbourne.1 Broadly experimental in both the formal and descriptive sense, Newman's work has constituted scientific-style experiments into the mechanics and the cause and effect of various materials and equipment. It also has a strong connection with the legacy of the European Avant Garde. But what is key to her work is the ability to continually question her role (as artist, as performer, as protagonist) within performance, and the constant effacing and side-stepping of any determination of fixed roles. From experiments in music and sound, to questioning of the role of artist and performer, to explorations of the relationship between text and action, the title of the recent monograph, Performancemania, neatly sums up Newman's enthusiasm for the history and development of performance art.2 It is difficult to adequately describe the breadth of address which the artist gives this subject within her own work, although her series, 'Connotations: Performance Images 1994-98' (1998), comprising nineteen separate works, delineates the scope of her practice over the last ten years and her engagement with fundamental questions facing performance today.
'Connotations: Performance Images 1994-1998' is the documentation of a series of fictional performances that took place in several different countries over a period of four years. They were, in fact, mostly constructed by the artist over a period of four days in London. The work adeptly raises the question of the role and reception of performance today, and its relationship with documentation and text. Traditionally, among the issues central to performance art... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline