James Thompson

Recording Performance [negative]
Leeds Town Hall, Leeds (UK), 2019
Film

The destruction of 114 clay moulds recorded from the re-situated states Henry Rowland Marsden, Memorial to Queen Victoria, Statue of the Duke of Wellington, and Sir Robert Peel on Woodhouse Moor, Leeds performed on the front steps of Leeds Town Hall, the site that all except Henry Rowland Marsden statue were relocated from in 1937 for a new carriageway and car park.

The performance merges and re-imagines previous iterations of the city, the materiality of the artist's process, lost futures and failed dreams. Clay used in the performance was donated to Leeds art students to be reconstituted as art objects in multiple forms.

The work was performed as part of Parallel Architectures IIIII (2019), at Leeds Town Hall during the Yorkshire Sculpture International.

Photo credits Jules Lister