Covers
2008-2020
Covers is an internationally recognised performance project by artist Harold Offeh. Initiated in 2008, the project has evolved through major commissions from The Studio Museum, Harlem USA in 2014 and the Live Art Development Agency, London in 2015.
Covers uses the artist’s body, durational actions and physical re-enactment to build on established performance methodologies of the 1970s by artists such as Adrian Piper and Marina Abramovic. Through photography, video and live performance Offeh re-enacts archival album sleeve photographs by black singers from the 1970s and 80s, creating static, durational, tableaux poses. Covers, innovates through its use of performance strategies to re-activate historical popular cultural images. In collapsing live and documented elements Offeh makes visible the mediation and power of the photographic image to fix and shape identity.
(Images 1, 3, 5) - Photos: Eloise Calandre
(Images 6-9) – Covers Playlist, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK, 2017. Photos: Bartosz Kali
(Image 10-13) – Covers Live, MAC, Birmingham, UK, 2015. Photos: Timothy Pratt Photography
- Links
Graceful (Arabesque 1) 2008, c-type print, Graceful (Arabesque 2) wide angle, 2008, c-type print, 60x40cm
Covers. After Rolling Stones. Exile on Main Street.1972 C-Print 32x32cm 2016
Covers. After Betty Davis. They Say I'm Different, 1974. C-Print, 32x32cm, 2013
Covers. After Funkadelic. Maggot Brain, 1971 (V2). C-Print, 32x32cm 2009
Extract from 'Covers Playlist'
