Since 2001, Paul Hurley has performed and exhibited in galleries, theatres, festivals and public spaces internationally. Whilst he is best known for his solo performance practice, his work has involved collaborative works and participatory projects with other artists, including Kathe Izzo, Manuel Vason, Anushiye Yarnell, Uninvited Guests and Caleb Parkin. In 2010, Hurley was awarded a PhD for his thesis ‘Reconfiguring the human: the becoming-other of performance’ from the University of Bristol, as part of an AHRC collaborative doctoral award with Arnolfini Gallery, where he was also an Associate Artist between 2008-2010. He has given talks, workshops, lectures and been published internationally, and has been involved with numerous artist-led projects. Paul is currently based in Bristol but works much more widely, and this blog is a place for sharing his thoughts, reflections, news and views. Do feel free to message if you want to get in touch.
Artist’s statement
Photograph from untitled performance, Aeon, Bristol, September 2010
My practice is centred around action- and body-based performance, usually manifested in live solo works, but occasionally involving photography, video, and installation, and collaborative projects. My work often takes theory as its inspiration, manifesting an embodied exploration of philosophy and the limits of language and representation. Central to my work is the live moment: the state ‘in-betweenness’ that occurs in the artist’s mediation of reality, as well as in the interrelation between artist and spectator, and between image or text (in its widest sense) and action.
My work has for some time been concerned with an exploration of the theoretical work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically the notion of becoming and becoming-animal, which was a theme throughout my performance work for a number of years (Becomings-animal, Becomings-invertebrate, 2002-7) and formed a central part of the research of my PhD ‘Reconfiguring the human: the becoming-other of performance’. This research trajectory, whilst still operating within a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework, has more recently developed into an exploration of what I term ‘the shamanoid’. This has involved a series of performances based around ritualised actions which simultaneously perform and interrogate the shamanic function of performance and the aesthetics of classic 1960s and 1970s action art. These actions are sometimes durational, often very physically and mentally demanding, and variously involve processes of transformation, trance and audience interaction, teetering between the sacred and the profane. As well as functioning on this secular-spiritual level, however, they also function on the level of ‘queering’ and on the playful subversion of the media and the forms from which they take inspiration. Examples of this have included: performing repetitive and destructive head-buttings of lettuces to a soundtrack of Shirley Bassey; conducting purification rituals covered in eggs, glitter and wearing six-inch stilettos; exploring the masochistic nature of the audience-artist relationship through squashing oranges over my head.
Beyond mere parody, this element of the work is I hope loyal at the same time as being promiscuous, paying homage to my artistic lineage as well as making a contemporary critique of it. And as well as functioning on a conceptual and theoretical level, I see my work operating on a much more universal level through the creation of encounters with struggle, vulnerability, otherness and humour. I frequently combine natural materials (fruit, flowers and eggs), sports paraphernalia (jockstraps, cricket pads) and drag kitsch (stilettos, feathers and glitter), with the more functionalist aesthetic clichés of classic performance art (metal buckets, paint, wooden sticks), to create works that are both disruptive and familiar, that strive to break a certain artist-audience relationship and replace it with a different, more productive, kind of empathy.
As well as showing my own work in galleries, theatres and performance festivals internationally, I have also published and had my work written about in the UK and abroad. Having been based for some time in Cardiff, Wales, but now in Bristol, England, I have also been involved in a number of artist-run projects – curating exhibitions, performance events, international exchange projects and instigating initiatives for artists, communities and the wider public – and have taught at a number of further and higher education institutions internationally.
