Predominantly performance and installation based, Gary Marshall-Stevens’ practice is grounded in a sculptural tradition of the physical encounter. Objects, moving image, audio, physical interventions; these become the debris of an attempt. Each bears the marks of passage through space, taking place in and for the moment. “Common Sense” narratives are interrupted by a body regarded as a precarious object, crude attempts to stay sane manifest as challenges. Akin to a prank, each is an exploration of a limit, courting probable failure with a dad-joke punchline that may never come.

This practice is a means of managing health, through it, extreme anxiety and depression are interrogated. Embodied practice as research, manifesting as attempts to unpack how mental health both impacts upon and is a manifestation of our ability to contend with precarious times and spaces. Courting catastrophe with cliché where necessity and freedom meet.

Gallery 333 is a space named for its dimensions, for the volume it contains. This work is a response to this quite particular space, taking place within it. A document of an attempt, here, which considers a long running preoccupation with a statement by Beckett’s Estragon – “We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?” revisited in light of recent readings of Cage’s Lecture On Nothing.

VENUE: GALLERY 333, EXETER PHOENIX

An intimate window gallery for micro-installations and sculptural interventions.