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User:Createfurther/Lee Adams (perfornance artist)

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Lee Adams
NationalityBritish
Known forPerformance Art, Curator, Experimental Film Maker

Lee Adams (born August 27, 1970, Liverpool) is a London based performance artist, curator and Experimental film maker. His work straddles an axis between the sacred and profane. Testing the limits and boundaries of physical control and endurance he examines the politics of the body in relation to mechanisms of culture and power. His visionary performances are highly ritualistic and rich in mystical and alchemical symbolism. Much of his work has been influenced by the ideas of French dissident surrealist and philosopher Georges Bataille.


Life and work

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Adams studied fine art at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford (1989-1992) under Professor Brian Catling[1]. He has performed and exhibited extensively in London and internationally in Milan, Athens, Belfast, Paris, Bordeaux, Lausanne, Berlin, Talinn, Vilnius, Copenhagen, Sydney, Houston, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Mexico City.

In 2003 he performed The Language of Flowers for Visions of Excess, an eighteen-hour event inspired by Georges Bataille’s book of collected early essays (1927-1939), featuring Udo Kier, Bruce LaBruce, Slava Mogutin and Kembra Pfahler, curated by Ron Athey & Vaginal Davis for Fierce! Festival.

In 2006 he collaborated with Athey to curate The Monster in the Night of the Labyrinth, commissioned by the The Hayward Gallery, London as part of the exhibition Undercover Surrealism[2], Georges Bataille & Documents.

This was followed by a series of collaborative events with Athey including Re-Visions of Excess for the finale of the 10th anniversary of Fierce! Festival in 2007, Visions of Excess at SHUNT[3] Vaults, London, commissioned by the SPILL Festival[4] of Performance in 2009 and A History of Ecstasy[5] (2009) alongside Othon Mataragas, Ernesto Tomasini, Vaginal Davis, Julie Tolentino, Mouse and Pigpen at the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina (MADRE) Naples, as part of the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia.

He later performed in London for Panic[6], curated by Guerrilla Zoo[7] at the Old Abattoir, alongside works by the founders of Mouvement Panique - Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor and in Copenhagen for Visions of Excess at the International Festival of Performance Art alongside Kira O'Reilly, Dominic Johnson, Lazlo Pearlman and Mouse at Warehouse 9.

Notes

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References

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  • Encounters photographic/live art project with Manuel Vason & Empress Stah, published by Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (photograph only). 2007
  • Art Attack - The Pain Principal. 3 page interview by Denise Stanborough. Bizarre Magazine, October 2007.
  • Epsilon Magazine Issue 867 - London Underground feature. Photograph by Socrates Mitsios. 2007
  • The Monster in the Night of the Labyrinth reviewed by Kate Random-Love in Total Theatre Magazine, volume 18, issue 04. 2006
  • The Monster in the Night of the Labyrinth reviewed by Dominic Johnson in Western European Stages, volume 19 Number 1. Editor Marvin Carlson. Publised by Martin R. Segal Theater Center, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. 2006
  • Bindu Point documentation published in Body, Space, Technology Journal, volume 5. Brunel University. 2005
  • Live: Art, Performance and the Contemporary. Edited by Adrian Heathfield and produced in collaboration with Tate Publishing. (Photograph) courtesy of Hugo Glendinning (photograph only). 2004
  • The Bachelor Stripped Bare reviewed by Professor Robert Ayers in Live Art Magazine. 2002
  • Cruising Interview with Joan Bakewell and performance filmed for Taboo - 50 Years of Censorship BBC2 Television. 2001
  • Government of the First & Thirteenth Chair; Re-staging of seminal work by John Latham to coincide with Latham’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, reviewed in Performance Research Magazine. 1992
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