(Above: Tate St Ives Visitor Assistant enacts 'The Smell of Knowing' near works by Margaret Mellis. Photo by Miguel Amado.)

'LATE AT TATE (I AM NOT HIM AND I DO NOT HAVE YOUR PEN)' All works 2011
Sculpture, scent, audio, text and performance

I was invited to devise a solo Late at Tate event for Tate t Ives in response to their Summer exhibition 'Martin Creed, Fischli & Weiss, Naum Gabo, Licio Fontana, Anri Sala, Margaret Mellis, Agnes Martin, Roman Ondak'. Tate St Ives described this sequence of one room displays as one that 'responds directly and playfully to the unique architecture and location of the galleries at Tate St Ives, drawing the building itself and visitors into the experience.' With this in mind I devised a series of more ephemeral gestures that aimed to operate in a similar way, albeit introducing a sense of uncertainty, miscomprehension and a potential for failure. I also played off the instances of repetition, sequence and frank use of materials to inform my approach.

I came up with a series of gestures, all entirely new works, dispersed around the building and occuring at various points throughout the evening...

'THE SMELL OF KNOWING'
Estee Lauder ‘Knowing' eau de parfum, 30ml

I placed three different scents around the galleries. Each twenty minutes the gallery invigilators were asked to pick up the bottle and spray it five times into the air then return it to it's spot. Estee Lauder 'Knowing' was placed in a room of Margaret Mellis' work; Calvin klein 'Obsession' in the Naum Gabo room and Armani 'Attitude' in the room for Roman Ondak's 'Measuring The Universe' piece. Each scent was chosen for it's neat literal and physical relationship to the artist's work it sat amongst, and indeed the themes of the show as a whole.
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'THE SMELL OF OBSESSION'
Calvin Klein ‘Obsession' eau de parfum, 50ml

The bottle of scent was placed along the bottom edge of the wall, as with all the 'The Smell Of...' pieces, in this case in the room of Naum Gabo maquettes, prototypes and sketches from the Tate collection.

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'THE SMELL OF ATTITUDE'
Giorgio Armani ‘Attitude' eau de toilette, 50ml

The bottle was placed in Gallery 5, containing Roman Ondak's 'Measuring The Universe', a work that Ondak specifies should not have any other art in the same room as it.

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'APPROPRIATE (Re-enacting Vito Acconci's ‘Seedbed' in the semi-radioactive undercroft beneath Tate St Ives)'
Sign, looped audio

The printed sign used the official Tate font but was written by me. The accompanying audio was of my faltering breathing, echoing faintly around the Heron Mall entrance, to the side of Patrick Heron's stained glass window and beneath Martin Creed's 'Work No. 232 The whole world + the work = the whole world'.

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'CHOIRMAN (I am not him and I do not have your pen)'
Performance lecture, 20mins

Delivered from within Martin Creed's 'Work No. 210 Half the air in a given space', my talk centered around my frustration at often being mistaken for Gareth Malone, the television choirmaster and also featured anecdotal information, trivia and gossip from behind the scenes of the exhibition. The talk ended with the balcony audience accompanying me in a loud chant.

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‘The ‘I's Have It' #1,2,3,4&5
Wood, adhesives, enamel paints

These 'I's were each made from three lengths of wood glued together and painted to resemble weathered, rusted metal tools of an uncertain function. They were distributed about the galleries as if mistakenly left out by the technicians. To the bottom of each 'I' the wood grain is still faintly visible. They were placed amongst or near (above: l-r) a series of works by Lucio Fontana, a room of maquettes, prototypes and sketches by Naum Gabo and hidden in the corner of a darkened room for an Anri Sala video.

Above: An 'I' placed amongst a suite of Agnes Martin paintings.
Above: An 'I' placed in a room of collages and paintings by Margaret Mellis.
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'THEN (Last Week's Top Ten)'
Audio, 43 mins

I was offered the opportunity to also select the music in Tate St Ives rooftop cafe that evening. Given the chance I thought it would be more interesting if I attempted to make my own.

I settled on an idea to re-record my own accapella versions of the previous week's top ten single releases, counting them down from ten to one. I hired a music studio and producer for an afternoon and he recorded my voice as I sang along to the originals on headphones.

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'AN INTRODUCTION TO LAUGHTER YOGA'
Group exercise

The evening ended with a short workshop, held within Roman Ondak's 'Measuring The Universe' room for the last fifteen minutes before the galleries closed. The previous week I had stumbled on an 'Introduction To Laughter Yoga' workshop and wanted to see if I could pass on what I learnt to the Tate St Ives audience. Exercises included 'The Handshake Laugh', 'The Painful Laugh' and 'The One Metre Laugh'.

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Above: A highlights package of the evening filmed and edited by Cornwall.tv on behalf of Tate St Ives.