A series of live performance and print-based works that examines the physicality of language and the body’s insistent desire to communicate.
Fight!, 2022, live performance, 4min 40 sec; Catriona Jeffries Gallery Vancouver (performed by Rachel Meyer)
Image Description: A performer with short dark hair is standing in a white room, their body turned to the left of the image, facing the wall. They are wearing a plain white t-shirt and black sweatpants, with black sneakers. Their left arm is extended outwards, with their fist clenched, and their right hand is resting on her hip. The pose suggest a sense of movement and energy.
Speech! Fight! Smile! (2022–25) is a series of live performance and print-based works. Made up of three discrete works, it explores the physicality of language and the body’s inherent desire to communicate. All three works consider how symbolic languages manifest at the edges and beyond the spoken word.
Speech!, 2023, live performance, 7min; greengrassi London (performed by Rory Kinnear). Photos: Marcus Leith
Image Description: A man in a black sweater and jeans stands in front of a white wall gallery space. The wall is lined with pictures, some of them featuring various letters of the alphabet. The man appears to be talking. The gallery space is clean and minimalist, allowing the performance to take center stage.
Speech! is a scripted speech delivered live before an audience. It explores the language of symbolic oratory by fusing highly stylised forms of address – political speeches, apologies, ceremonial toasts – into a single form. Speech! developed into Rant (2024), a series of large-scale print works.
Fight! is a choreographed sequence of unarmed combat performed by a single individual live before an audience. It explores the language of physical violence by compressing a fight between 12 people into a solo sequence of moves to performed by one person.
Fight!, 2022, score detail
Image Description: The image depicts a series of diagrams illustrating the movement of a human body. Each diagram is labeled with a number and divided into a grid in times of eight. The diagrams show a variety of movements, including a spiral, a circle, a zig-zag, and a combination of straight and curved lines. The score is also divided on the vertical axis by the indication of “legs” (L/R) “arms” (L/R) and “head”.
Smile! (2024) is a choreographed sequence of facial movement performed by one person live in a gallery. It uses the language of facial expression to explore the relationship between voluntary and involuntary action; language and the body; expression and meaning.
Rant (no.03), 2024, silkscreen on paper 94 x 167cm
Image Description: A poster with black letters over a white background.
All three works draws from diverse fields of enquiry, including theatre, dance, psychology, film and non-verbal communication research. Each work is scored using a unique form of graphic notation, exploring the expressive capacity of type. Speech! Fight! Smile! continues Kerbel’s experimentation with the material conditions of language.
Speech! and Fight! were both performed at Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver (2022); Greengrassi London (2023) and National Gallery Prague (2023). Smile! will be performed for the first time in 2025 at i8, Reykjavik.
Smile!, 2024, score study drawing
Image Description: Some black characters and punctuation marks are freely displayed on a white background
Janice Kerbel works with a range of material – including print, type, audio recording and, more recently, light – to explore notions of visibility through the inhabitation of forms that both promise and withhold the realisation of subsequent states. Much of her work employs existing languages from a wide range of disciplines, re-imagining them in isolation from their expected use. It is in this way that her practice tries to imagine and develop new forms. In the past six years, Janice’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Tate Britain and Chisenhale Gallery in London, as well as internationally in Vancouver, Toronto, Chicago, and Reykjavik. Her work has also been a part of group exhibitions at the Burcharest Biennial in Romania and ‘Biennale de Montreal’ in Montreal, Quebec. She has received the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists as well as grants from Arts Partners in Creative Development and Canada Council for the Arts. Her work has been reviewed in Art Monthly, frieze, Art in America, Artforum, and Canadian Art Review.
Links
Catriona Jeffries (gallery) website
Review of the exhibition at The Art Newspaper
Exhibition at greengrassi, 2023
Michael Newman, ‘Deliveries: Moyra Davey’s aerograms and Janice Kerbel’s performances’, Enclave Review, Issue 18, Summer 2024
