Testing Grounds @ Permanent Gallery, Saturday 18 July

Image: Sian Robinson Davies. Photo: Simon Stephen

If you’re one of those people that thought performance art was what hippies did instead of tv, it’s time to step out of the antiquated 1970s inspired perceptions and come experience an experimental art laboratory that is gaining respect and attention beyond the small comforts of a small gallery space off Western Road.

Tonight at 7pm Permanent Gallery (20 Bedford Place, Brighton BN1 2PT) plays host to a night called Testing Grounds. It is the brainchild of young French curator Nadege Deridan, performance artist Orion Maxted (who both run protoPLAY) and Permanent Gallery.

Testing Grounds invites several artists from the UK and beyond to participate, bringing new ideas they’d like to test out before a new audience – or rehashing old ones, but in new ways.

Risk-taking is in, sitting in your seats being quiet is out.

For those new to performance art, I can tell you that it is probably not your great-aunt’s cup of tea. In my experience, performance art is:

• interactive
• fun
• challenging
• weird
• music art theatre visual
• any and none of the above

This is all very true for Testing Grounds. I’ve been following Testing Grounds for the past two years, and in that time, I’ve: dressed as Homer Simpson and sprayed people with beer; been locked in a shed with a boy I’ve never met for seven minutes; played a banana game; cajoled strangers while dressed in a white boiler suit and Carol Smiley mask; made a mad sojourn to the sea; watched a woman batter herself with flour; and god knows what else.

Each evening, I watch some art I like and some art I feel lukewarm about; I’ve met new people; drank plastic cups of wine; talked about art; made connections; laughed; gone cross-eyed; and generally walked away thinking ‘that was a good two hours of my life’.

The  curators have finally received some recognition for the unique event and have been awarded Arts Council funding to take the event across the south east. Well deserved and for all the right reasons – rewarding people who try out their own brand of art events off their own back and support it when it works.

The night has solidly maintained good audiences for their brand of art and entertainment.  I’m not sure what tonight holds.  I’m sure it will be a bit nutty and I will be disappointed if I don’t laugh at least once at the strangeness of it all.

What they say:

“The fate of thought depends and will depend for a long time between regret and assay“. Jean-Francois Lyotard, What is post-modernism? 1982

For this edition we invited 4 artists from the UK and abroad proposing to explore the dislocation between text and image, focusing on structural fragmentation. From Sian Robinson Davies (Nottingham) subtle and humorous construction of different narratives translating formal spatial arrangement into language to David Berridge (London) adapting texts he wrote from Kafka’s notebooks into a musical and visual choral, the event promises to be a stimulating and playful selection of works for the imagination.

In his improvised music piece, Phillip Henderson (Nottingham, Farnham) will question “vertical temporality” with an electric harmonium, metal detector and improvised arhythm on drum kit. This edition will also showcase a new performance by Catalan artist Joan Casellas (Barcelona). Joan Casellas has been one of the outstanding representatives of the Spanish parallel art scene since the 1990s and although he’s been performing extensively throughout the world, he has not returned to making performances in the UK since 1994, when the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in London organized a documentary exhibition of his performances and interventions.

I’ll put my hand up and say that I actually don’t know what structural fragmentation is with regards to text and image, but I reckon after a few glasses of wine and a few chats around the smokers on the front steps, I might have a better idea.

In the meantime, come along and watch some art. Yeah.

Testing Grounds 4/3 pounds, starts 7pm. Permanent Gallery, 20 Bedford Place, Brighton BN1 2PT (off Western Road)