THE MEASURE OF MAN

Theresa Byrnes premieres her 2010 performance art piece for the Howl Festival.

Her performance pushes you off the cliff of old ways of thinking but leads you to other roads to think down. She intends to keep you mentally and spiritually on the move.

Theresa Byrnes began to exhibit her paintings in 1986 at the age of 16 with painting as her core medium. She began performance art in 1988 and it has become integral to her arts practice. Byrnes published her autobiography ‘The Divine Mistake’ in 1999 (Pan Macmillan, Australia). Theresa moved to New York in 2000.  She has lived in the East Village for 10 years. Byrnes has exhibited with Saatchi & Saatchi and performed for numerous galleries and Howl Festivals.

This, her new performance THE MEASURE OF MAN re-evaluates man’s perfection and God’s supremacy and reminds us of the supremacy of nature.

Leonardo Davinci’s anatomical drawing THE VITRUVIAN MAN heralded the age where the perfection of man was central to all things and encouraged progress and excellence in the individual and in society.  The assertion of the centrality of the human soul in the order of creation is an idea Theresa challenges.

The performance THE MEASURE OF MAN is a one-hour, one time only performance, it will be a Howl event not to be missed! On September 10, 8-9pm. viewers will stand and sit on the sidewalk outside the store window that is Byrnes’ new project space (Suffer, 616 E9th Street between Aves B & C, NYC), and watch through the full glass front of the space as Byrnes’s latest performance unfolds over the course of an hour.

"Byrnes’ performance pieces place her amid the ranks of a purist avant-garde of artists operating at the fringe of contemporary art in America today. I say purist, because for them there are few boundaries or taboos. As part of a well-established genre of experimental performance and body art dating back to the 1960s and ’70s, the Australian’s shows are both fearless and confronting. Her works are contemporaneous, often attune to environmental concerns, but she also shares the sensibility of an older generation of feminist artists like the late Nancy Spero. Byrnes is a provocateur whose sometimes uncomfortable offerings are designed to provoke a reaction in her audience. And by placing her body and mind at the centre of her art she challenges her own interpretation and her own vision. It is no surprise that her work has a strong evolutionary thread. It is organic, earthy, and, like the cycle of life theme of many of her paintings, it grows. Uncompromisingly she is ’woman’ channeling life, death, fear and joy, through an exposed, vulnerable human shell. It is all on the line, and that is the wonder of Byrnes’ art."

Martin Newman, art critic The Daily Mirror, London

Photos – Greg Weight from NEST performance 2009