Jade Williams

IDEA: Live video chat me playing with my toys and creating narratives/finger dancing... Invent narrative. USE MY BOB THE UNICORN MUSICAL AND PUPPETS!!!!!!!!!!

"The fine line between attraction and repulsion
http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/23412/1/the-fine-line-between-attraction-and-repulsion

Emerging artist Jade Williams questions the often grotesque sexualisation of everyday life and function through her performance work

"Turn on" - Jade Williams

“I’m drawn to the aesthetics of substances on the human body and more importantly how everyday necessary bodily functions; shitting, pissing, salivating may upset or pollute the ideal image of what a woman is supposed to be.” Artist Jade Williams’ performance and video art may gross you out - think: spaghetti bolognaise dangling from her mouth in her piece “Persona” – but that’s the point. “It’s the idea of people being drawn in, enticed by the work initially and then feeling uncomfortable and repulsed as it develops,” Williams says.” Exploring the ideas surrounding excess, gluttony, saturation and waste in the modern western world, she continues; “I like the idea of wastefulness and how we put stuff into our body – food and products seem to have lost their value now”, she continues. “I’m interested in the idea of filling something up so much it bursts – reaching a level of saturation.”

Currently in her final year studying Fine Art (BA) at Nottingham Trent University, Williams uses her face, body, everyday substances, food and the internet as her mediums; “I started working around ideas of consumption and expulsion, and the push and pull between the two.” At just three years-old, to look ‘normal’, Jade had cosmetic surgery. “I had a birthmark spread all over my lip. My parents decided to get rid of it so I’d have a ‘perceived’ easier childhood, but it’s interesting now that I use my mouth in a lot of my work as this sexualised image. But would I if I still had the birthmark?” This week she’s in Holland as part of Kunstpodium T Tilburg’s Apprentice Masterproject, where she’s joined by Alex de Roeck from Dublin, Sara Bachour from Mastricht and their New York-based master artist Melanie Bonajo. Their collective project, entitled Because of the Internet, explores the effect of the internet. “I’m exploring how you can become anybody you want to be over the internet. How you can have a persona, change your behaviour, manipulate and fall in love over the internet," Jade adds. “It’s about how we perceive things now the internet is at its peak.” Ahead of the exhibition (which you can live stream from 7pm UK time tonight, here), we look back at some of Williams’ past work below.

“IT’S ALL TELEVISION”

“I brushed my teeth with some really fucking stupid black toothpaste. I wanted to explore ideas of pointless consumption, durational performance and Western ideals of beauty and look at how live performance featuring the human body and technology can work together in the same space.”

"Its all television" - Jade Williams

“TURN ON”

“I played around with a light switch whilst wearing these grotesque fake nails – to convey ideas of masturbation and narcissism, self-love and self-worth. How mundane every day behaviours, objects, acts, can become sexual depending on the context they are placed in or who carries them out.”

"Turn on" - Jade Williams

“KISS”

“I consciously decide not to show my eyes in a lot of my work – so there’s no emotion. I almost become an object; a flat image. The dribbling thing is sexual, but it’s clinical at the same time. Is it sexualised because I’m doing it; a 21 year-old female with big hair, big lips and clear skin, or could a man do it or a 70 year-old woman? It’s a pisstake really; ‘put more collagen in and put more make-up on, that makes you more beautiful’ – why has it become that? Is that really beauty?”

"Kiss" - Jade Williams

“HYPE”

“It was all about getting hits – people watching. I set up a camera on my phone, sat in a white cube room and I kept putting on lipstick, drinking some milk, eating an apple and reapplying my lipstick. I was flirting at the camera, rubbing my lips, but nothing provocative. I started getting a few hundred hits. Then when I reached 1,500 I stopped it, but it was archived so people could replay the live stream. I called myself ‘Liquide Organique’, which means bodily fluid in French. I like the idea of so easily being another person – for an hour. I was thinking how far will this go? So I stopped it, because you can’t control people on the internet – people could screenshot or record it. There are so many clever people who manipulate it. It’s just wildfire. All of a sudden it was all gone, I was back down to 0, Veetle removed my videos because I was trending – they thought that was inappropriate so there are obviously still boundaries on the internet. Something that would be accepted in the everyday, not being accepted online – but usually it’s the other way round. I emailed Veetle and they wouldn’t reply, so it’s just lost in the internet really.”