Pull

Pull – Performance Diptych
16 & 17 August 2025

These two live performance works explore the fragile relationship between the female body and the landscape and is the first public iteration of my research on the island.

 I researched place, time and body on the island through action, photography, drawing, video and writing. Reflection on the historic and contemporary absence and presence of women on the island and women’s relationships with the sea prompted me to create a performance identity using found and natural materials.  I’ve been inspired by the relationship between tide and the feminine, reflected on my own experiences of the sea and feminine aging whilst exploring of Hilbre’s tidal edges and buildings. Encounters with small crustaceans and molluscs suggested somatic movement. The vocalisation is in response to the sounds of birds and animals.

In locating the two parts of this live work at the two edges of the island I was thinking about one’s sense of exterior and interior. I wanted to attend to arrival and leaving and draw attention to the larger vista: leading viewers to look beyond the edge of the island itself – towards the wind turbines and into the Irish Sea, or across to the seals on the sandbank and the coast of Wales. Encountering the resulting performances triggers an uncanny and eerie beauty.

 Pull - Part One: Dyson appears at the shoreline on the old lifeboat launch slip at the Northern tip of the island, with wind turbines on the horizon.  She wears a strange garb: high viz ‘workman’ trousers’, an old diver’s mask, and an old jacket sewn with mussel shells. She carries a large bell across her body which rings as she moves. Dyson rings the bell then walks slowly up the stone slipway. Gradually, she dances a series of extending and curling movements until she has travelled up through the derelict building and onto the island.

 Pull - Part Two: Standing at the South end of the island as the tide turns. Dyson faces the sandbank in the Dee, where Grey Seals rest. She creates an improvised, wordless ‘song’, with vocalisation based on the sounds of the animals and environment. The vocalisation includes scales and screeches, trills and cries. Her action is a song for the seals, for the rocks, for the people as they hurry to leave.

Pull - A Drawing (2005)Pencil and acrylic on paper

 I have been visiting the island over the past five months. This drawing reflects my thoughts over that time, mapping the island in relation to a body, my body. I made photographs, small sketches on paper, on slate and in sand. This large drawing references the scale of my own body and the structure of the island. Marks relate to movement and stillness. I’ve worked loosely with colours from the organic and manmade landscape.