David Sherry’s Ill Fated Fete and The Confraternity of Neoflagellants’ Sergeant-At-Law

Wednesday, 14 July 2010

The creative manifestations of David Sherry and The Confraternity of Neoflagellants (Norman Hogg and Neil Mulholland) will be included in the Edinburgh Arts Festival 2010. Both artists promising to deliver excess, absurdity and humorous homage, their endeavors seem to be in tune with the Edinburgh Festival’s theatrical counterparts. Sherry’s work will form a continuation of his residency at Deveron Arts earlier this year. The residency manifested in the performance Ill Fated Fete, which will be re-staged here. This work satirically explores the absurdities of modern day health and safety regulations. He takes the nuisance and irritation out of the notion of meticulous risk assessment by undermining conventional behavioral codes and exploiting their comedic value.

This sentiment permeates all aspects of Sherry’s existence it seems; anyone who visits his studio is obliged to sign a disclaimer stating that, upon entering, they “take full responsibility for myself in event of a slip, trip or fall, broken bones, blindness, breathlessness, stroke, electrocution, the contraction of any virus, burns, major organ failure, suffocation, and in the event of being insulted or undermined in this building". He exaggerates an excessively fastidious system of enforced measures that Sherry proposes do not accurately reflect the terrified, safety-conscious society that they suppose.

Ill Fated Fete at the Edinburgh Art Festival consists of four interventions – Cleaning Change at Collective Gallery (1st August), Mirror Man at The Royal Scottish Academy (3rd August), A-Z of Health and Safety (4th August) at Stills Gallery and Left Luggage at the John Hope Gateway, Royal Botanic Gardens (7th August).

Hogg and Mulholland’s (or The Confraternity of Neoflagellants) intervention An Unco Site, commencing with a late night procession, also has a performative element to it. They invite tour guides and historical re-enactors of the city’s legendary ghosts to join them. This reflects the confraternity’s continued fascination with neomedieval ideas. The work will take the form of a flash mob intervention consisting of three parts – The Zombie Walk, commencing at 11pm at Scott Monument on Saturday 7th August 2010 which precedes ‘The Reception” that will take place in the early hours of the morning. The third component is a symposium, ‘Investigating Premodern Futures’ which will be held on the following day at the University of Edinburgh, featuring a range of speakers on the subject of neomedievalism.

Hogg and Mulholland intend to intertwine popular horror, Romantic folklore and ancient mythology, as the procession, as Mulholland describes it, crosses the Styx to a wake that will consist of a Tam O’Shanter, Night of the Living Dead mash-up. The event will be filmed and streamed on the creative social network, www.thisiscentralstation.com and on the Edinburgh Art Festival website, www.edinburghartfestival.com. Further information can be found on the artists’ project blog, http://lightmotiv.blogspot.com/.