Walking in the Way: Performing Masculinity
Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti
WAAG (Women Artists Action Group)
English
Softcover
Edition of 300
100 pages
260 x 200mm
2012
ISBN 9781399920766
Walking in the Way: Performing Masculinity catalogues a 12 year performance art project between the artists Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti. Edited by Catherine Marshall and published by WAAG (Women Artists Action Group) this retrospective book contains critically engaged essays by Catherine Marshall, Dr. Áine Phillips, Dr. Kate Antosik-Parsons and Nieves Correa as well as performance documentation over a durational period.
Walking in the Way is a collaborative performance series by established artists Frances Mezzetti and Pauline Cummins. They explore control of space, stereotyping, masculinities, movement and presence.
Walking in the Way was first performed in Dublin in 2009 and the artists continue to probe the possibilities to date. As feminist artists who challenge essentialist fixed identities, these Irish artists seek to make visible how gender intersects with society. They pay particular attention to how small acts and movements can be re-presented and performed in and through their “gendered” bodies.
The Walking in the Way performances take place in cities where the two female artists take on the mannerism, gestures and physicality of male presence in the public arena. The focus of each piece develops from the general to the particular and each one is unique to that city. The development of the work is informed by key figures from the chosen community, and an important part of the research process is informed by understandings and connections that are forged with local individuals in each of the selected cities. The performances are observational, transient works, with a unique meaning and resolution. 10 performances have taken place in 9 different cities, Dublin, Belfast, London Edinburgh, Derry/Londonderry, Istanbul, Madrid, Seville,
and Malaga.
(source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/products/walking-in-the-way-performing-masculinity-pauline-cummins-and-frances-mezzetti)
About the Artists
Pauline Cummins’ performance and video work examines the human condition from a feminist perspective. Research driven themes of the political body, activism, human rights and gender are often explored in the artist’s practice. Cummins likes to collaborate with artists and communities in public sites and situations; including within prisons as a visiting artist and was the founding chairperson of the Women Artists Action Group, (WAAG). Cummins lectured at the National College of Art and Design from 1994 – 2014. Her work is in both national and international collections including The Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National Maternity Hospital. Commissions include the Newgrange Interpretive Centre, New St. Park (Dublin) and the National Maternity Hospital.
paulinecummins.com
(source: http://www.paulinecummins.com/)
Frances Mezzetti is a Visual Artist and director of Art Well. Art Well provides a link between creative expression, and optimum health, with individual and collaborative body based art expression.
francesmezzetti.com
(source: https://www.francesmezzetti.com/about/)
About the Publisher
WAAG, Women Artists Action Group, was a countrywide organisation founded by Pauline Cummins in Ireland in 1987. Its purpose was to promote women artists working in Ireland through exhibitions, seminars, and publications. The membership consisted of artists and art historians. WAAG’s initial exhibition showed works by 90 women artists in the Guinness HopStore. The group formed links with an international European network of women in the arts, enabling members works to be shown in Germany, Austria, Spain, and the Netherlands. WAAG established a slide bank and held seminars in Derry and Dublin culminating in the exhibition, Women Artists and the Environment (1991) with site specific work by international artists throughout Dublin as well as a forum in IMMA, opened by President Mary Robinson, with key speakers, the art activists the Guerrilla Girls.
(source: https://www.eva.ie/artist/women-artists-action-group-archive-of-pauline-cummins/)
