Red Wedding

Bodily Functions Programme
Granary, Cork
25th - 28th May 2005

Reception Space, East End London
28th July 2005

Special Thanks to
Curators Tony McLean Fay (Cork) & Helena Walsh (Reception Space)
Design & costumes in collaboration with Petra Bhreatnach
Sound Compositions in collaboration with Brian Doyle
Film in collaboration with Tom Flanagan

Red Wedding is a 60 minute solo performance work based on the Catholic Mass and Wedding Ceremony, incorporating vivid imagery and performance gestures, enactment and evocation using the spoken word, recorded sound compositions and cinematic projection.

Red Wedding is fervid and ardent,
Abject and transgressive,
Beautiful and honourable...

Red Wedding is based on religious ceremony and Catholic Marriage using the stages of courtship, formal union, consummation and relationship to create the structure upon which a multi media and live art work is built. Universal themes of desire, passion and connection in love with all its contradictions are explored.
The performance is a scripted work with Áine Phillips delivering her texts live and in dialogue with recorded voices. The script is a poetic litany or declaration of lived experience and memories. In the final sequence, the artist "marries herself" in an attempt to integrate and join opposing aspects of the self, the male and female, the strong and vulnerable, the ugly and the beautiful. A sequence of digital video works are central to the evolution of live images in the performance which include a vast nest bed made of 500 pieces of red clothing that transform into a dress, a weeping cake, torn love letters as confetti, a stage-set of hanging blood stained sheets, intertwining burning rings…