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There used to be an undercurrent of British performance art that paid homage to the techniques of British variety entertainers just as much as it reflected the influence of the American Happening: Jeff Nurtall and his circle, the early work of Bruce McLean and Gilbert & George, and others disregarded by historians in the field who follow an American model. Mel Brimfield (D1976) is not old enough to remember the performances to which her work alludes, but she has immersed herself in their history, and has perfect pitch for the recollective and academic residue that is the only remaining presence around what she calls 'the absent performance in the middle, and the stuff you're left with', the brittle realm between truth and research. Having studied sculpture at Chelsea, Brimfield 'just stopped' making art, she says, but eventually turned to curating exhibitions and events about art. Like Alison Jackson, who constructs those unsettling photographs and short films using lookalikes of public figures, Brimfield remains just to one side of being either a biennale artist or a media satirist.
Using humour asa disarming way of entering into what would otherwise comprise a discrete academic discourse, Brimfield's 'This is Performance Art' is the second phase of a project initiated during her residency at Camden Arts Centre a year ago. There she began to make fake archival material related to a misremembered...