Self describing Actionist Peter Dobill, New Zealand born with a Brooklyn New York ascent has completed a recent performance piece titled Reciever were the artist is suspended in a pool of milk, while a bowl placed overhead drips a continuously timed stream of milk into his nose.

His work steems from the Vienna actionist tradition and the likes of Vitto Acconci who famously built a fake section of floor in a gallery and over the duration of the exhibition hid under it masterbating aloud to those who entered the gallery.

This performance based tradition had seemed to have been lost. Peter Dobill has decided its time  for its resurrection. I say rightly so in this time of science being god, Peter works with bodily actions which is a step closer to the mystics, discovering a more personal  sense of self through ones own body and mind. Mental and physical planes of existence are created and transferred directly to the viewer from observation and experience of witnessing the act.

Duration is an element of all performance but for Peter it seems to be a test on the body, a ritual inducing suffering to some form of enlightenment. The space of which Reciever is set gets close to the cinematic, like a scene from a Kubrick film or a Matthew Barney set for which Peter occupies maybe helping communicate to the audience a sense of mysticism in the true sense of the word.

Whatever it is i like it and i feel like Peter is asking important questions regarding the self and the existence of self, which is a refreshing move away from art for arts sake.

shannon