ABOUT
A York based performance group who use walking as their practice and as a route of enquiry.
Cutting Clouds is a performance group made up of three individual artists who work mainly within performance. In search of new methods to 'read the city', Cutting Clouds investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits it has as a spectacle, based on our assumptions of what landscape means to an audience. Rather then presenting a factual reality, a fragmented illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of out imagination.
The works made are characterised by the use of the everyday, patterns found within nature and the number three. By exploring the concept of landscape in a nostalgic way, the artists focus on the idea of 'public space' and more specifically on space where anyone can do anything at any given moment: the non-private space, the non privately owned space, space that is economically uninteresting.
The number three has played a significant role throughout research process into our different works. Three is triad. It is beginning middle and end. When working on new performance ideas, we focus on what three means to us as a group and try to be aware of this begging middle and end, that has come out of our reach into the number three. Utilising it within our performance as a rule to make work.
The Artists
Alex Kaniewski
Artist Kaniewski is a York based theatre maker and performance artist, predominantly interested in image and the aesthetic of performance. His work creates visually exciting and unusual experiences for an audience, within a contemporary theatre model. Alexander’s personal performance art practice engages with the body’s interaction to natural and handmade materials and objects. It focuses upon how through their manipulation, meaning can be conveyed and an experience transferred. As an artist he is interested in the image of the body in relation to others, the staging of the body in stillness with in the environment around it, drawing attention to the body of the everyday.
Originally from East Yorkshire, Kaniewski's training was primarily in the more traditional form of theatre, before moving to a more contemporary theatre practice. However he retained a great passion and interest in the history of theatre and seeks inspiration in the artist of the past.
Imogen Sutherland
Imogen has a passion for theatre and performance art, and the power that it has. She is particularly interested in performances that directly interact with its audience or their subconscious contributions. As well as theatre works that engage with breaking down the fourth wall. Her personal practice also looks at social history and social standings within theatre, exploring family and lineage within a performance setting. Taking inspiration from those who witnessed and were involved in her own upbringing. This fits with the workings of Cutting Clouds through an interest in our social surroundings and how those that live and walk around us affect how we explore our own artistic practice.
Born and raised in Derby, artist Sutherland now lives and works in York. Her interest in nature based works comes from a childhood in Derbyshire, despite living in a city the countryside is only a stones throw away and this has greatly influenced her as an artist today.
Jim Harris
James Harris is an artist based in York who explores the world of performance (art), live art, projections and media.
His individual practice is autobiography through homosexuality and queerness.He works within the medium of performance in the context of visual art.
Artist Harris is interested in gender, sexuality and identity and how that affects way in which we live affects us. The drive of his work is to explore and investigate these conditions that have been risen from contemporary thinkers such as Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and it is enriched by feminist theories and contemporary culture.
He begins his work with conceptual ideas, research and objects. He works on ideas until the need for understanding changes into new meaning.
The live process marks out his practice.
