Delpha Hudson

'What concerns me are ideas: philosophical, psychological, practical and non-sensical. Art is not just visual. Art can change not just how and what we see, but what we understand. Art is a collection of ideas, written, enacted, presented to all of the senses'.

Since re-training as an artist in 1997, Delpha Hudson has worked with a variety of media including performance, video, text and installation. Her original degree in history informs her work, which uses research, versioning and text to play with perceived 'truth' and misapprehensions. Much of it is based around feminist theory and writings; endeavouring to re-represent women and mothers, examining the contradictions and discourses of the Other, and playing with presence, absence, invisibility and performativity.

There have been various diverse strands of activity in Hudsons performance work: durational actions, interventions in public spaces, ‘install-actions’ (in which the act of making an installation is the performance), time-based performance & video combinations, and pseudo-historical tours. It would be true to say that interaction and dialogue with the public are as significant as visual elements are to her artistic practice.

For Dos Palabras, (2004 - above) Hudson brought sea water from St Ives  (where she was living), to a stall in a street in Notting Hill, and exchanged small clear plastic bags of seawater with a word attached for another word given to her by members of the public. This inte(xt)change finds a reference in Isabel Allende’s short story Dos Palabras and is typical in the way it deals with dialogue and rituals of social exchange.

Comfort Zones (above) made the following year (2005) used the process of taking a photograph to record a more private relationship. The result was a series of portraits depicting mothers’ relationships with objects that give them comfort.

For 'Handbag Readings' (left) at the Newlyn Gallery (2006) Hudson adopted the fictional character of failed palm reader Madame Marina Sac-a-mano, and offered to ‘read’ the contents of visitor's handbags, bags, and pockets.

Whilst humorous, the process of handling peoples’ private

belongings necessarily became an intimate psychological exchange: exploring what people own, why, and what it might say about them. Sac-a-mano slipped between reality and fiction, and between our 'performed' selves and 'real' selves.

Depha Hudson is one half of artsurgery  http://www.artsurgery.org/