Richard Layzell
Softly Softly

This video documents Richard Layzell's performance Softly Softly, an elemental journey exploring suspension, elasticity, anthropomorphism and flight.

Taking place in a then undisclosed location in Whitstable, it invited participants to uncover the universal in the everyday, the endangered in the familiar, function and form, expectation and humility, success and failure, tension and release, pathos and play.

whitstablebiennale.com/project/softly-softly

Part of Whitstable Biennale 2016 - The Faraway Nearby

Richard Layzell is internationally recognised as a visual artist working in performance, video, installation and socially engaged practice. His recent commissions include the installations Glory at Tramway Glasgow, The Magpie at Forty Hall London and Clear Stripes for DCA Dundee and Glasgow’s Buzzcut.

From an extended residency in one square mile of Shanghai he developed The River Flows and the recent WP for Hardwick Gallery Cheltenham. His central concerns are space, context, timing and materiality. He sees humour as a device rather than an intention, and audience engagement as a palpable relationship of profound mystery.

He currently leads the Print and Time Based Media Course in Fine Art at UAL London and is the author of Cream Pages and Enhanced Performance.

Filmed by Reynir Hutber at the Horsebridge Centre and other locations in Whitstable, on Saturday 4 June 2016.
With thanks to thisistomorrow.info