The Why I Hate England and Book Burning Literary Festival

  DIS   – MEMBER My work questions how to show the ephemeral, live experiences that make up the quotidian within the fixed frame of the art institution. Further: how to preserve life, or rather the breath of ‘aliveness’ .   (1) For  the work:   ’foot’   for   APT+ O NE   2018  the  gallery’s white  reception desk was extended so   that the   invigilator’s  leg  could be displayed through a conveniently positioned hole, at  an angle to the ir  body.   (The aesthetic of the desk was the same as the gallery walls).  A literal double take was intended as  ‘ foot ’  was p art of a  group show  which featured  a list of works including:  'Cloud', 'Head' and 'Giant’. T he  intervention  caused a lot of discussion  and  surprise  with visitors  and  passers-by who  assumed  that the leg/foot was  artificial  or belong...

  Why I hate England Literary Festival Another  Forced Entry  Fran Cottell’s House Projects 2001-17 The frustration with the distancing and cerebral,  often enjoyable experience of many gallery shows being an adequate response to political and environmental events and conditions in ‘England’ and ‘the west’, originally led to the stepping back further from the outside, public, performance, institutional, exhibition space to the house as a situation to be recon-figured as an ‘art’ work. However extreme a public action/performance etc. is afterwards the participants and or artist and audience then ‘go home’. The house has become a pre-occupying entity/structure/situation that has been re-visited and re-worked every few years. Platforms (of increasing height) like catwalks have been built, running through the rooms, circling objects, a hole still punctures the ceiling. Concerns have shifted from the focus on the quality of disorder to relative power relationships betw...