3 Generations Of Women Artists Perform

Perth Concert Hall, March 8

Staring into a mirror, a woman reinvents her image while two separate voices are heard talking over each other discussing split personalities. Another woman looks down into a mirror which she later smashes while a French narrator repeats phrases over and over about how being blonde is akin to perfection. A third woman creates a masked replica of her own face which is then worn by several people.

Finally, a fast-paced compilation of moving images forge a link between tacky TV advertising and the US space programme.

Welcome to the four films which comprise a core of 3 Generations Of Women Artists Perform – a four-hour event as part of the Perth and Kinross Women’s Festival and which takes place in the Norie-Miller Studio and Threshold artspace within Perth Concert Hall.

Respectively, the videos are Elaine Shemilt’s Doppelgänger, Klára Kuchta’s Être Blonde (Being Blonde), Federica Marangoni’s The Box Of Life and Teresa Wennberg’s VOL (Theft/Flight), with all of these short films having been made sometime between 1979 and 1981.

Co-curated by Iliyana Nedkova and Laura Leuzzi, 3 Generations Of Women Artists Perform features screenings of the four experimental videos, a talk by Leuzzi (art historian who researched European Women’s Video Art Of The 70s and 80s at Duncan Of Jordanstone College Of Art and Design), and examples of live performance art from DJCAD students.

Plus, the now Dundee-based Shemilt will attend in person to deliver an updated reimagining of Doppelgänger.

“We’re very fortunate to have Elaine here to perform a response to her own work from 1979,” says Nedkova, Creative Director For Contemporary Art at Horsecross Arts and the driving force behind the annual 3G events which first began in 2016.

“Such a re-enactment in person is quite unusual, and will be a one-off surprise for us.”

While Shemilt actually destroyed most of her own video work from the late 70s/early 80s, Doppelgänger somehow survived the cull. “When we were putting 3G together I interviewed her and she confessed to having felt back then that there wouldn’t be any significance attached to her work and that she was in the shadow of her male counterparts of the time,” recalls Nedkova.

This year’s 3G is the culmination of WOMEN, Horsecross Arts’ collection of 60 works from contemporary artists, and is an experimental examination of the point where performance art meets feminism.

“The videos are self-portraits and a means of trying to tell their own story,” states Nedkova.”

Clockwise from top left: Teresa Wennberg, Vol, 1981. Courtesy of the artist; Klára Kuchta, Être blonde, 1980. Courtesy of Kuchta Archive; Elaine Shemilt, Doppelgänger, 1979-81, still from video. Courtesy of the artist; Federica Marangoni, The Box of...