Artist Talk - Marvin Gaye Chetwynd 12/03/14

What struck me most, initially, about Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, or Spartacus Chetwynd, as I had previously known her, was not necessarily the work that she was presenting and discussing (although by the end of the talk I had come to warm to the work also), but the way in which she presented herself, the way she works and her thoughts regarding what it is to be a contemporary art practitioner.
        I was surprised at how personable she was: she was greatly sincere and charming and spoke clearly about her work. Unlike many of the artist talks I've been to so far, she sought to make her work uncomplicated and thus, it was.












Video played: "An Evening With Jabba the Hutt" @ The International 3

     
I knew of her work having followed last year's Turner Prize, but I disliked it a great deal because to me it came across as being intentionally unreadable. However, having listened to her 'presentation', a word which she used with great satire, I noted, I found that her performances were the exact opposite of that: from what at first seems to be a collection of nonsensical, absurd re-enactments emerges performances with great sincerity that illuminate the artist's obvious love of collaborating with unlikely people.
        There was no particular way in which she found people to participate in her performances. I was surprised at how many of these people she had simply met on a night out, or through a friend of a friend. For example, the actress who played the role of the conservationist Joy Adamson in the re-enactment of the story of Born Free was a friend of her mother's. Her father also featured in this particular performance. It became apparent to me that these people volunteered to participated not only because they admired Chetwynd's performances, but because of the artist's obvious passion and belief in what she did.



        As Chetwynd explained, she makes all the costumes and props included in her performance with her "little hands", thus enhancing the authenticity and modesty of her practice, I believe. She was not unaware that these costumes and props could simply be seen as badly made, and in fact found this observation greatly humorous. The cause for this 'home-made' effect was due to the tight schedules with which she worked and also, more interestingly, because she made them as and when she had the idea, but noted that this "turned out to be a quality in itself". She emphasised that no designing went into the making and realisation of her performances. She would sometimes only know what the performance was about the night before its showing, when everything was complete and all the themes suddenly interlocked.
        Described as a "momentum" that she is not really in charge of, Chetwynd's relationship with materials is an intuitive one. She noted that if she did not do this as a career she would continue the process of making nonetheless and would be equally comfortable putting on small scale performances at house parties.
     
The talk as a whole was engaging and I could not help warming to Marvin Gaye Chetwynd.


Other videos played in presentation:
"Thriller" performance and documentary style video of later performance.
Clips from "Born Free" and "Erotics and Beastiality: Depraved Creativity."