Victoria Bone
Victoria Bone is an interdisciplinary artist working across Live Art, sculpture, drawing and video. Rooted in feminist critique, her practice examines the social and economic constraints placed on the female body through themes of submission and control, using ritualistic performance structures and materials historically associated with women.
Attempts in Self Healing: Live performance, Contact Theatre, Manchester 2023. Medium: ink, thread, fabric, aluminium bowl.
Attempts in Self Healing has been created from my own health issues of chronic pain and essential tremors. In this live art performance, I reference ritualistic ways of healing by marking myself with a natural ink I have made from turmeric, marigold, rose, lemon grass, sunlight and spring water, all chosen for their healing properties. In a meditative state, I use the ink to make automatic sigil-like marks on my legs, arms, face and head. I then bind my head/face with string dipped in the ink and lay down in an attempt to heal myself. The piece ends with my sitting up, unravelling the string and walking away
Fallacious Memory: Live art performance Roper Gallery, Bath 2024
Medium: Fabric, fuller's earth.
Wearing a long white dress, I kneel in front of 5.2 kilos of fuller's earth. The pigment represents 52 years of life — all the memories and experiences, good or bad. I sink my hands into it, scooping it up, trying to hold on to it, covering my body in it. As I push the pile across the floor my body leaves a trace behind me. I use fuller's earth because it is formless — it can't be moulded, carried or controlled — in the same way memory is inaccurate and morphs every time we recall something
Drip Feeding: one to one, live art performance 2016.
Medium: Fabric, bamboo cane, spoon, honey.
In a large white angelic costume I entice an audience member to sit on a chair in front of me. I place a quilted pet cone collar over their head and cover us both with a large pram hood, away from the eyes of the rest of the audience. I produce a small silver spoon containing a drop of honey and gesture to them to open their mouth, reminiscent of a baby bird. The work explores choice and nurture — at the beginning and end of life we struggle for independence despite needing help to survive, fighting to gain or hold onto sovereignty over the most basic everyday actions.
Mother line: sculpture 2023.
Medium: Fabric, thread and wooden hangers.
The work is about unseen matrilineal lineage and spiritual beliefs. Mitochondrial Eve can be traced through DNA, these lines from one person to another seem tangible but do not exist in a physical form. Spiritual lines are also invisible and can attach us to people, landscapes, and beliefs like Mother Mary. The used bodysuits are figure phantoms representing these ancestral and spiritual mother figures. Sewn to them are fabric spine like objects, coming from one spine to the other are torn strips of deep red taffeta linking them, forming a visible connection
The Hidden: sculptural form worn in a live art performance 2018.
Medium: used men's shirts, thread.
Made and worn in a performance while scrubbing the streets of Bath with gold paint. Here it hangs in its own right.