Perform

Surveys the ways in which artists use art to puzzle out the complicated ways in which performance plays a part in our daily lives

Featuring over 300 illustrations, this book explores performance in art from a wide range of artistic attitudes and practices.The third title in Thames & Hudson’s major new Art Works series, this ‘exhibition in a book’ features the work of over 100 artists who examine the place and function of performance in the contemporary world.The book is divided into eight rooms on the themes of: Inside the Box/Outside the Box; Performing the Object; Exchange and Transform; Still Life/Tableaux Vivants; Provoking the Everyday;Traces/Oblivion; Narrate/Withhold; and The Performer is in All of Us. Some of the artists present themselves as living, performing objects, others make the audience the main protagonists in the creative process. Some create ephemeral or short-lived pieces, or pieces that are designed to leave traces of the artist’s or viewer’s actions, while others freeze time in dramatic images or hyperrealistic sculptures. Some explore storytelling in their performances, while others offer only cryptic fragments. Complete with over 300 illustrations, most in full colour, Perform explores performnce in art from a wide range of artistic attitudes and practices.The book closes with a round-table discussion between the author-curators and a handful of fellow critics, artists and writers on themes and ideas stimulated by the topic of the book.