In Your Face

Feb 3, 2012, SHOW Studio, London

Performances by Harold Offeh and Eloise Calandre

“Contemporary artists Harold Offeh and Eloise Calandre collaborated to explore concepts of portraiture and its capacity to challenge and provoke in a series of three one-off performances collectively titled In Your Face: I See Myself, broadcast live throughout 3 February 2012.

The first performance plays with the concept of this gesture of friendship and approval and transforming it to a painful endurance test. The second film builds on the provocative theme of the latter, exploring the potentials and possibilities of facial expression and using Calandre's own face as a screen for a re-projection of her features. The third broadcast is an expansion of Offeh's existing series, Covers, where the artist uses himself as the key figure in a recreation of the cover of The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street. The artist appears as '3Ball Charlie', a thirties freak show performer.

By using the primary mediums of popular culture - photography and video - Offeh and Calandre's performances explore portraiture in a new way, unravelling complex ideas of race, identity and desire.”

Commissioned by SHOW studio - click here to watch