The Art of Hayley Newman

Below are some of the captioned images that artist Hayley Newman displayed at her first solo show, "Connotations - Performance Images 1994-98".

Lock-jaw Lecture Series (1997/1998)
"Over the period of a year I was invited to give a series of lectures on my work. Before each lecture I visited a local dentist and had my mouth anaesthetised. With my mouth made immobile, I gave my feeblest apologies to the students and staff before attempting to talk on my work."

B(in) (1996)
"Sitting in a bin bag waiting for bin men to pick me up in New York. When the bin men arrived at 4pm, I jumped out of the bag and ran home."

Crying Glasses (An Aid to Melancholia) - (1995)
"Over a year I wore the crying glasses while travelling on public transport in all the cities I visited. The glasses functioned using a pump system which, hidden inside my jacket allowed me to pump water up out of the glasses and produced a trickle of tears down my cheeks. The glasses were conceived as a tool to enable the representation of feelings in public spaces. Over the months of wearing the glasses they became an external mechanism which enabled the manifestation of internal and unidentifiable emotions."

Spirit (1995)
"Soho, London: Dressed as a ghost for Halloween I ran into various pubs in London's Soho, stole a drink and then left."

Here's the punchline, which Newman revealed if you read the fine print in the exhibit guide:

The photographs in the series were staged and performed by myself with most of the images being taken by the photographer Casey Orr over a week in the summer of 1998. The dates, locations, photographers and contexts for the performances cited in the text panels are fictional. In all instances the action had to be performed for the photograph but did not take place within the circumstances or places outlined in the supporting text.

Image sources: Lock-jaw, Crying Glasses, B(in), Spirit

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Alex - Fri Jun 09, 2017
Category: Art | Photography and Photographers | 1990s

Comments

I perform 'Spirit' all the time, not just on Halloween. And without the sheet.

Posted by S. Norman on 06/09/17 at 07:57 AM

I think staging these photographs and making up the captions is actually better art than "performing" them would've been.

Posted by Richard Bos on 06/10/17 at 07:26 AM

That's so meta.

Posted by Keith Elliott on 06/13/17 at 09:51 AM

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