I AM DIFFICULT TO FATHER was a collective performance and convivial in collaboration with artists Freddie Anderson and Eddie Hare. A socially engaged performance piece inspecting queer trauma embedded into heteronormative familial units along with contemplations on sensuality and survival, concerning the act of eating. Audience members were invited to participate during the happening sharing food, drink and whispers until completion. Bread was taken from bins of local cafes, dips were made in situ and as part of the performance. The evening finished with a reading in which the tone was lowered. White linen was placed centrally within the space in which the food sat on and where a majority of the evenings practices occurred. Towards the end of the performance the linen became sculpturally prominent: filled with spilt wine, pastry crumbs and the marks left from the beetroot dip in contact with both performers and audience members. Playing behind the action in the far left corner of the space was three moving image works by Greally depicting each performer submerging themselves in water. This performance was made in response to each individual participants area of research at the time - the show was made in hopes to make clarity of the research areas, in hopes that the notions of radical love, hardcore gentleness and acts of kinship would be prominent factors of this piece.

Step on one’s toes and be encouraged to bite the hand that fed. The common ground shared contemplates ‘Notes on’ and pre-processes mournings of matter which has not yet left and rather latches holier than thou to table spread. Homesteading between gaps and the less obvious kiss, your taste remains - and the dirtied cheap faux silks, it will do for now, Somehow, it’ll be alright. There is no place for your kneading hands, our bodies bend beneath the folds of dough where no crack of night might reach us. Problem child, the rules of thumb. There was little time for hypnosis.

(2022)