CARALI MCCALL

Carali McCall joined us for our first performance residency earlier this year. As the sole artist occupying the residency space McCall continued working on a series of her performance drawings pushing the boundaries between body, gesture, surface, and landscape. In McCall’s practice, the body is a tool; movement is line and stillness an answering mark. In recent work, McCall has been focusing on this stillness, the exertion of control in a pregnant pause, the feeling of holding a piece of the landscape against the body.

The artist's work often pushes the body to its limits, such as in her circle drawings where graphite is drawn in circles against paper until the arm gives in to exhaustion. In the still seen above, McCall performs with a shoulder sculpture beside Work no. 1 (Circle Drawing) 2 hours 2 minutes, 2023. There is a juxtaposition of stillness against movement, the circle drawing, though inanimate, acts as an artefact of the artist's motion. The active performance between artist and sculpture is imbued with its own tension, the lack of motion, though serene in appearance, is undercut with a careful holding of the body. 'Stillness' becomes an active action; against gravity, against the tiring body, of ‘holding’ and ‘addressing’ as drawing.

Close Ltd Gallery, Lines of Empathy, Somerset, 2023; Gryder Gallery, New Orleans, 2023; Performance Research Journal, issue 27.8 'On Blood', 2023; RUN VERTICAL (Running up the Side of a Building): Live Performance (awarded Arts Council England), 2023; Château Arton Performing Rock, Lectoure, France, 2023; Blunk Space / with WRIGHT & DOYLE, Inverness California, 2023; Patrick Heide Contemporary Art Lines of Empathy (group exhibition) London UK, 2023; V i d e o S o u n d A r c h i v e : S6 L.A, 2023; Artseen Gallery Cyprus, Exhibition and Live Performances, 'i miss the land but does the land miss me?', 2022; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Performing Rock (Basque) *MEM festival curated by Txema Agriano, 2022; Wright + Doyle Art Residency for SS23 collection, 2022; Performing Rock, Live performance, (and holding rock sculpture, Liane Lang) at Wirksworth Art Festival, 2022; amongst others.