Sinéad O'Donnell at fiX02

Sinéad O'Donnell, performance shot, fiX02; courtesy the artist

In a packed Attic Arts in Belfast a group of young artists made performances to a crowd of over 250 - the crowd included thirty-two international performance artists, local curators, and representatives of almost every arts organisation in the city. The event was the Open Platform evening of Catalyst Art's fiX02, the Fifth Belfast Biennial of Performance Art and the biggest performance-art festival in the UK in 2002. Not an easy gig. All the artists involved made impressive and wholly confident performances, affirming the healthy presence of performance art among Belfast's up and coming. One of these artists, Sinéad O'Donnell, made a brave work which deviated from the central performance area and began in the male toilets, drifting out up the packed staircase, disrupting the flow of Armitage Shanks-bound audience members. Nine steps, each with a small shaving mirror placed in its centre, led to two urinals where O'Donnell began her ascent. With paper and tape binding her hands, feet and crotch and with a naked torso, O'Donnell rubbed small mounds of earth, dead shamrocks and Israeli coffee, piled either side of the mirrors, firstly with her hands and then with her head - repeatedly washing herself with dirt and checking her reflection. She spat on two mirrors fixed to the graffiti-covered wall, rubbing earth into them and slowly polishing the reflection with the mud. The performance continued for forty-five minutes with O'Donnell destroying and rearranging the earth on the stairs, spitting on and cleaning the mirrors, ascending and descending the staircase and corrupting the paths of the audience before climbing the stairs and disappearing into the crowd. The performance could have gained intensity over a more extended duration; however, O'Donnell's precise execution of the work proved a successful investigation into public intervention and quiet manoeuvre.

Helen Sharp

Sinéad O'Donnell at fiX02

Article reproduced from CIRCA 103, Spring 2003, p.90

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