Slipped, Fell And Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor
A live site-specific performance on 10th, 11th, 17th, 18th June 2022.
On a loop from 1-4pm each day.
Naylor’s Cove, Bray, Co. Wicklow.
ABOUT
Slipped, Fell And Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor
A live site-specific performance on 10th, 11th, 17th, 18th June 2022.
On a loop from 1-4pm each day.
Naylor’s Cove, Bray, Co. Wicklow.
Lisa Freeman’s new scripted performance work features actors, a saxophone player and a significant location: the once-busy sea bathing pool at Naylor’s Cove, Bray.
Drawing on the town’s history as a site of leisure and respite, this work positions the human body in this now-defunct site of relaxation. The actors create intimate moments of dialogue in this public space, where the script touches on ideas of therapeutic infrastructures, tourism and the body as an archive. These moments are woven through this site of failed architecture, set to a live musical score performed by a saxophone player.
This project stems from Freeman’s research into sites of failed and poorly designed civic architecture, and how these sites can negatively impact our health, identity and leisure pursuits.
Information on the work can be viewed on the Mermaid Arts Centres website here.
To view video documention of the work please email me for a link at freeman.lisamarie@gmail.com
CREDITS & THANKS
Photography by Louis Haugh
Curated by Anne Mullee
Presented by Mermaid Arts Centre
Performers; Biaina Ryan, Niamh McPhillips, Tadhg O’Rourke (Actors) Andrea Jones (Saxophone).
With thanks to; Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Padraig Cunningham, Emma Conway, Jenny Sherwin, Julie Kelleher, Gerlanda Maniglia, Dennis McNulty, Astrid Newman, Claire Walsh, Dan Reidy, Lana May Fleming, Lauren Conway, Vera Ryklova.
Kindly supported by an Arts Council of Ireland Project Award, Wicklow County Council and Mermaid Arts Centre.
About Naylor’s Cove
Naylor’s Cove has a long history as swimming destination and is located just below the start of the popular Bray to Greystones cliff walk.
The Cove was named after local fisherman and boat builder Bart Naylor, who leased the land from Town Commissioners in the 1870s. He erected bathing boxes and a small pier, and the spot became a popular sea bathing spot. It fell into disrepair following Naylor’s death in the First World War, but was revived in the 1930s when Bray Urban Council built a small children’s swimming pool.
The spot became so popular that three further sea pools were built, and it remained busy until the advent of the package holiday in the late 1960s. In 2011, Bray Municipal Council* removed the then derelict remaining structures leaving it in the condition it is in today.
* Note the changing structure of local governance over a century and a half.
Slipped, Fell And Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor
Artist Publication
This fold-out postcard invite for Slipped, Fell And Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor takes inspiration from 1950’s fold-out postcard’s that were used to promote tourist destinations.
This postcard contains project research images, text and archival imagery.
If you would like a copy of this postcard please email me with your postal address to freeman.lisamarie@gmail.com
With thanks to:
Astrid Newman, Anne Mullee, Emma Conway, Padraig Cunningham, Andrew McSweeney and Mermaid Arts Centre.
Project supported by an Arts Council of Ireland Project Award (2022) and Wicklow County Council Strategic Projects Award (2022).
Green Skies, A Double Rhythm
Artist Publication
Publication layout, digital version
Image: Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Book Fair, November 2020
About
This is a fold out publication, created as a document of the live performance, Green Skies, A Double Rhythm, October 2019. This is 22x20 cm (approx A5 sized) when closed. When opened up it folds out to A1 size with text and images on one side and a large scale image on the reverse.
Included is:
A written overview of the live performance Green Skies, A Double Rhythm.
A written response to the performance by Lily Cahill titled ‘Ladies Run! There’s A Man In The Rose Garden’.
An excerpt of the performance script.
Selected images of the live performance are placed throughout the publication.
More info on the Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Book Fair can be found here
About the performance
Green Skies, A Double Rhythm was a site-specific performance that looked at the lived experiences of the ‘Wrens of the Curragh’; a marginalised community of women sex workers that lived in gorse bushes outside the army base in Kildare in the 19th Century. The performers led the audience on two different promenade performances that were centered on a live musical score by a drummer on site.
This multi-layered work looked at the lives of this marginalised community of women, alongside contemporary issues of labour and exploitation.
Credits and thanks
Publication Design
Becks Butler
Written Response
Liiy Cahill
People involved
Musician
Sarah Grimes
Performers
Claire Blennerhasset, Emma Finegan, Lauren Kelly,
Niamh Murphy, Mary Pat Moloney, Mary Power Cooney
Photography
Dan Reidy
Videography
Louis Haugh
Production Assistance
Róisín Bohan
Special Thanks To
Dan Reidy, Maeve Connolly, Sinéad Hogan
© Lisa Freeman November 2020. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission of the publisher.
Brows For Days
Digital video, vinyl text and drawing installation, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, 2020
Video stills: Hook, Spill, Cry Your Eyes Out
ARC, IADT, MA Show
The LAB Gallery, Dublin
January 2020
Drawing and text based vinyl installation on the windows, floor and columns of the gallery.
Dimensions variable.
The video is shown on a loop.
Photography by James Keogh
The work touches on things that are inflated;
bills
lungs
bellies
airbags
egos
Green Skies, A Double Rhythm
Live site-specific performance, The Curragh, Kildare, 2019
