Photo: Juan Martin Pereira
“Throughout its history circus has always attracted the independent-minded, the rule-breaking, the stubbornly different – artists and iconoclasts with something to say, something to prove, or something to show. At once captivating and challenging, their work has had an outsize influence on art, culture and the way we think.
Moving from the beginnings of the modern circus, through the radical acts of the 1980s, and out into a modern universe of different styles and approaches, the Circus Originals exhibition uncovers a selection of the pioneers and new thinkers, past and present, who have transformed the circus field.”
Curated by Crying Out Loud and displayed at Somerset House as part of their 2018 East Wing Edit, the Circus Originals exhibition encompassed a new installation by the artist Rose English, an illustrated overview of circus history and modern approaches to the form (based on a concept and original research by Olga Lucia Sorzano), and a video room screening short films and documentaries. It ran 25 July - 7 August 2018, and was complimented by two weekends of free performance in the Somerset House courtyard.
I worked with Crying Out Loud to write the texts for the exhibition and to feed ideas into the curation process.