The Factory

11th - 13th March, 1995

Mary Duffy, Don Belton and Daniel J Maretinez, The Factory, Hill Street, 5 Exchange Place and Belfast City Centre      

Three performance events presented in collaboration with Newcastle Upon Tyne’s artist’s group Locus+.

Review. Artists Newsletter, May 1995, Ben Allen.

MARY DUFFY: Stories of a Body

DON BELTON: Populuxe

A performance prompted by a visit to a G.P., in which Duffy, who as a thalidomide survivor, was reminded how she had been disempowered and desensitised as a child by the medical profession, as they labelled, defined and re-defined her very existence. Most of all, she remembers their horror at her condition, and their treatment of her as if she was invisible. In her own words, “They were not the only ones to treat me as if I was invisible and incapable of comprehension. In fact, being treated in this way is a regular part of my life and in many ways by standing here, in front of you, I am holding up a mirror to you and questioning the nature of your voyeurism.”

Acclaimed American writer Don Belton will be visiting England for the first time to premiere a new performance work:

“Populuxe” is an audio-visual monologue incorporating pre-recorded sound and projected images. “Populuxe” is a neologism of late 1950s America, which alludes to notions of popular consumer luxury. In an era of ‘frost-free’ refligeration, ‘sheer-look’ appliances, Belton points to a more potent mass-produced metaphor which appeared simultaneously in that era: that of ‘black power’ and ‘black authorship.’ Through Belton’s idiosyncratic use of travelogue, diary, autobiography, fiction, jokes, legends and news items, he will chart the evolution of the Black diaspora in Philadelphia.

DANIEL J. MARTINEZ:

How To Con A Capitalist

Los-Angeles artist Daniel Martinez is renowned in America for his confrontational and incisive analysis of race issues. Martinez will present a street intervention in a variety of urban and suburban Newcastle locations. “How To Con A Capitalist” takes as its starting point the familiar, if often invisible, image of street-hawkers who eke out a subsistence living from the sale of cheap disposable items. Rather than ‘three lighters for a quid’, his mobile barrow will offer a series of limited edition multiples which act as totems for race relations: bread with slogans, wooden pistols, stencils and posters.