British artist Eddie Peake who currently has a solo exhibition of work called ‘The Forever Loop’ which is on view at The Curve, Barbican Centre, London, has just presented a “reimagining of sorts” of one of his performance pieces from his days studying at the Royal Academy. Whilst a post-graduate student Peake staged a naked five-a-side football match in Burlington Gardens where the two teams were differentiated only by their socks and trainers. Entitled Touch (2012) it addressed the inherent tactility and homoerotic exhibitionism that comes with contact sports.
Last Friday in Paris, the latest performance of the piece now called Duro, took place at the contemporary art gallery, the Palais de Tokyo. I.D. Magazine caught up with Eddie to find out about his latest enactment and the bare-faced theme of nudity in his work.
“It’s a thread in my work which I’ve felt disinclined to pick up since I presented Touch (which by the way was not my first football match performance, the first one having taken place when I was a student at the Slade in 2005 or 6) because although I love the work, I haven’t loved the way that it’s been an easy work for journalists and bystanders to comment on in facile, flippant or tabloidy ways. But Paris feels like a newish context for me, and so I like the idea of introducing myself with a work that sort of precedes me, because although Duro is a new work, it is very similar to Touch, which at this point is sort of iconic.
It’s also a work that I feel can stand up to the very self-consciously enforced chaotic aesthetic of the Palais de Tokyo, in which viewers pass through in a not necessarily completely focused way. Although I think of my more choreographed/scripted/narrative based works with casts of dancers and musicians as being way more complex and complicated, I wouldn’t feel as comfortable, at this point, of subjugating them to the chaos of the Palais de Tokyo.
Although the fact that the players are naked may be the first thing that strikes you about the piece, what is interesting is how quickly this becomes unimportant. In Touch, a similar work I stayed in 2012, people remarked that they forgot about the players’ nakedness as the drama and/or banality of the game took over.
All the players wear is socks and shoes, signifying their team. One of the reasons I avoid clothes or costume in my other performances is that clothing is a language of signs and messages, and I want to strip the body down to something essential and not attached to a period or culture. My choreography sometimes refers to art history (an ongoing wrestling match of mine), for example to the poses of classical sculpture, and this connection is more apparent when the dancers belong to the story of the nude in art.
In Duro, nudity comes to seem natural and uninhibited, but of course in our society it generally isn’t. This is something I’m interested in examining – or rather asking the viewer to examine. I like people visiting my exhibitions or performances to have active experience of viewing. Confronted with nudity, people start to think about their own reactions – whether they are a bit embarrassed, awkward, even turned on, or feel like a voyeur, and why. Then they are really conscious of being physically present and engaged with the work. That’s not the same as just wanting to shock, provoke or titillate though.
Human bodies – all kinds of bodies – are interesting and beautiful, and a powerful medium to use in art.”
Photography DURO, 2015, Palais de Tokyo © Eddie Peake © White Cube (Ben Westoby) 
