USA
Jamie McMurry has been an active artist, educator and organizer in the fields of performance, installation, video and conceptual art for more than 15 years. He teaches at Art Center College of Design Pasadena and is currently based in Los Angeles, USA with his wife and three daughters.
Presented in the context of the 8th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.
American artist Jamie McMurry’s epic new performance work, Ranchero, begins inside at Mercer Union and using a moving vehicle filled with audience members moves to a second location.
The cacophonous actions and objects that one encounters in everyday life are not only often absurd but also are the unseen details that define our characters and separate us from all others as individual beings. McMurry’s recent performance installation works as part of the Ego series have sought to make manifest these day-to-day actions and interactions with objects to illustrate a vocabulary with the outside world that has been developed over the span of his life. Ego instalments 1-4 have been presented in Bangkok, Los Angeles, Glasgow and Séte, France and have typically taken place in very small spaces over the course of several hours. This context only allows for a few viewers to see the on-going work for a short period and leaves them with a fraction of a glance into the biography being depicted in these performances, much as we all encounter one another’s biographies in everyday life. With Ranchero McMurry continues to share this language of one’s history through performative acts but instead of having the viewers pass through the work, the work will pass through the viewer.
7A*11D is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7A*11D was established in 1997 by a group of performance artists, collectives, and organizers, eager to develop a forum for performance art in Toronto. The first 7A*11D International Festival of Performance Art, in August 1997, presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists
This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?
yellow mandarin, mimosa
honey, chamomile, salt
narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer