Homage to Piero Manzoni, 1998, performance still, Serpentine Gallery, London
I was asked by the Serpentine gallery to do a talk around the Piero Manzoni exhibition and to pay homage to the artist during his retrospective exhibition in London. The gallery had just reopened after the refurbishment. The exhibition was great but was hung in a very museum-like way with relics of Manzoni's work enclosed in very thick Perspex frames and plinths. I decided, as a fellow Italian artist, to pay homage to him my own way and to try to bring some life back to the work, and to re-enact a work by Manzoni titled The Consumption of Art by an Art Devouring Audience.
In the original work Manzoni distributed boiled eggs, which he previously printed with his thumb, in black ink, on them to members of the audience in the gallery space and invited them to consume the object of art and to make it disappear.
I therefore faithfully re-enacted this action on Easter day 1998 around the only egg that was left putrefying on a plinth protected by a perspex box. It took me a long time to find white eggs in London, in the end the only place I found them was Harrods, conveniently placed close to the gallery. I was banned form doing other events in the gallery as I disrespected the rules and regulations of the gallery by bringing food into the gallery space and taking polaroid pictures of the event without asking permission, so here they are.
Homage to Piero Manzoni, 1998, performance still, Serpentine Gallery, London
Homage to Piero Manzoni, 1998, performance still, Serpentine Gallery, London
Homage to Piero Manzoni, 1998, performance still, Serpentine Gallery, London
Homage to Piero Manzoni, 1998, performance still, Serpentine Gallery, London