Sharon Whyte

I take the relationship between performer and viewer (and the points where this relationship breaks down) and use this as a mechanism through which to examine various impulses ranging from desire to punishment. I am interested in the performer/audience dynamic as an unspoken contract entered into, within which is permission to scrutinise the other and make judgements that we use outside of the performance space. The spectacle, beyond entertainment, can also be something that functions as a lesson, a warning or a catharsis. The performer, while often literally taking on roles, must also take on and embody an assigned position within society that utilises the individual artist’s creativity or skill but simultaneously results in a kind of entropy. Feeding from the idea of being ‘trapped within the field of vision’ my work becomes a site where performers must forever fulfil their ‘function’. I create images and text that depict the idea of work, struggle, labour and futility in a constant mirroring of creativity, the drive to show, obsession, madness and isolation. This investigation carries with it a strong feminist viewpoint, and an underlying commentary on the media/surveillance culture that surrounds us in the form of CCTV, webcams and the constant presence of images. Since performance is viewed through the lens of the socio-political paradigm within which it is staged, such paradigms cast their own agenda through the repetition of certain tropes and the constant replaying and reproduction of dominant normative or proto-normative images.