The Painter and The Performance Artist

Manifesto by Ruby Chew and Ida Sophia for the open-studio show The Painter and The Performance Art held at The Mill, April-May 2021

The process is the exhibition. It is an encounter and exchange of practices. The closing (Finissage) night is the opening night.

We place perimeters, constraints and restrictions upon each other. 

We acknowledge limitation and altered perspectives are the vehicle for expansion.

We intend to see our practice through the eyes of the other: to strip it naked, assess it, empower and embolden it with radical acts of experimentation and interpretation.

We feverishly seek to be uncomfortable and through this, find variations and outcomes that otherwise would not occur. 

We believe in interrogating and challenging systems in a world now irrevocably changed.
We take 5 materials each into the gallery to share. Ruby brings paint, brushes, paper, glue and wood. Ida brings the body, time, fabric, light and a camera. We do not use any others. 

We bring one symbolic object each as a starting point.

The work is industrious and constant. We trust. We fire. We make work. We make work. 

We fail and fail better. We make work. We make work.