Florence Peake’s Your Meaning Not Your Materiality (YMNYM) performance at TheCOLAB The Artist’s Garden | 16.05.26
I am standing in The Artist Gardens in Temple, the centre of London, around me are the sonic fragments of the two protests taking place in the city
the occasional drunken jeers of Tommy Robinson’s chosen family
police helicopters passing overhead.
Rain has begun to seep from the sky my hands are cold.
And in front of me, two figures moving slowly in an embrace. My body sends me messages while the work avoids it altogether. It separates itself from the other events of the day.
It denies the overt.
Florence Peake’s Your Meaning Not Your Materiality (YMNYM) is of the slow, emerging species. The kind where meaning ebbs out
bleeds across the floor
like the thick plaster that inhabits many of the corners of the piece.
The performance of this kind starts without fanfare.
It simply begins when everyone seems to be assembled
in the right place at the right time
and does not demand attention loudly but
in quietening its own space
quietens that of our own.
It is this distinct matter-of-factness that moves the piece forwards. Like tentpoles, the feeling of doing what we are doing and making sure it is all done right, hold up a great canopy under which the audience are also housed.
There is never a sense that one could leave midway through. It is understood that we will all see it to the end, as much part of the casting process as those caked in dust and powder.
The audience encircles the stage of action, spilling over behind, in front and around the figures.
Of course the performers, or workers perhaps, are separated visually from the audience by the brilliant postbox red coveralls - worn by almost all those participating in the performance, bar the young helpers mixing the plaster, and the two men who embrace in the second piece. They instead wear tones of muted burgundy, the young casters looking almost in school uniform, perhaps not yet subjected to the seriousness of a coverall, while the men seem to be granted a greater individualism whilst adhering to the communal palette.
The actions continue back and forth
from plaster buckets to figures.
from pouring to smoothing.
from kneeling to lying.
Despite the rhythms of the process, it never feels repetitive.
There is too much consideration to each action
nothing is drone work.
The pace is not too fast to be stressful nor too slow to seem laboured, they sit at the edge of efficiency and are neither self-indulgent nor vacuously practical.
And in the centre of all of it, is the artist.
Hardly distinguishable from her fellow workers, subsumed to the team and the work to be done.
The communication between Florence Peake and her team is like that between one another, it is simple, to the point, but not orderly. There is the occasional soft smile but mostly people are intent on their task and betray little else. There is no laughter, no gesturing. There is none of the active commentary that normally accompanies actions like this - although I am comforted to see this occurring at the close of the performance. Warmed to see the players thaw back into familiar chat when their tasks are all complete.
For now, we are held in this mobile immobilisation. Us and those being cast.
As the act continues, I notice that the ones not wearing gloves have started to cast themselves, their hands caked in thick plaster and beginning to curl into Michaelangelo. They are handed some blue roll and I watch them brush the thick white globs off into a bucket and hope it is at least keeping them warm in this wet wind. I think the same for the people laying on the ground, and later when the two men kiss, I am glad they have each other’s body warmth and wonder if they are holding each other a little tighter than in rehearsals, on this cold May evening.
I look back to the young helpers who have not stopped mixing plaster this whole time, and I wonder what their stories are,
if they have cast anything before, and if they will go on to do more.
I find myself thinking a few times about the stories of those involved, lulled into my own chain of thought by the comfort of repeating actions, and taking a short recess before looking back to the progress, or to a new composition of bodies that is folding around in front of me.
I walk around the circle to capture a few different views and each one is as interesting as the last. From every angle I can see new worlds.
I consider sitting down. I would like to be at the level of the people on the floor, which I can see some of my fellow audience members have already tried,
but I decided I’d rather be mobile.
At times I forget to move
I forget myself, and for long periods become transfixed again by
the deep act of water
and plaster
and humans in all their delicacy.
I am particularly moved when they come to pour plaster at almost eye level to the lying figures, and one of the casters holds up their arm to shield the face of those lying.
They create a human dam with their forearm and watch
barely breathing
as they steer the thick mixture away from their airways and down, billowing onto the red tiles.
Towards the end of the first casting, I can see that the row of buckets lined horizontally are now vertically stacked, each dirty used bucket being added to the top of the pile. Only when there are a few left, do I realise that this must account for the duration left of the performance. I wonder what the sum was.
This much plaster plus this much water equals this much time?
equals this many universes for the audience to experience? equals this long for the figures to lie safely?
equals the amount we can carry here?
Whatever the thought, I begin to feel nervous. Excited. Unsure.
As the final bucket is brought on. I can sense the audience are feeling the same.
What happens next?
The final bucket is poured
by this time the plaster mixers have all stilled and sit, cross-legged with hands on knees, watching the rest of the action with an intensity as if they had not been part of the team only a few minutes prior.
As Florence Peake and her fellow caster conclude, they join together on the marble and sit.
Watching. Waiting.
Peake stands and repositions herself to the floor, she has an investment much like myself, to see as much as possible.
We wait.
Patiently.
Half of us in mystery and the other in certainty.
Then one of the lying figures begins to rotate their head.
Slowly at first, as if waking from some deep hibernation.
And then begins the slow trickle of movement in the others.
Perhaps a hand is the first to stir, or a foot. A forearm and then a leg. Each begins with a gentle rotation, to shake themselves free of the sticky plaster. And then a longer movement, to peel away from the cracking white surface.
There are times when things have become caught, perhaps a fold in the fabric of their clothes, or in one figure’s case, their shoes which seem resolutely stuck in the now solid cocoon from which they are emerging.
The movements at times become stronger, a tug, a rhythmic bounce back and forth, as if readying themselves to run, rocking themselves out of this white embrace and slowly unfolding themselves to stand.
They do not help each other nor do they obstruct each other’s movements.
There is a sense of everyone knowing where each other is at all times, a presence that is collective more than it is individual.
A presence that the audience remains a part of as all the figures spread themselves loose and walk off, accompanied by the casters and mixers and artist. All of a sudden a team.
The first performance betrays only one solid sign of occupancy
a lodged pair of black patent shoes.
The rest of the plaster retains only whispers of being.
Deep cavernous shapes that swell and
dip
bubble and spike across centremetres of cast that could be entire stretches of landscape.
The first structure is as though some river’s inlet has frozen over, while the second teeters carefully on the bench.
It appears primed to fall any minute but stubborn in its insistence to protrude
a fierce flowering that seems it would outlast us all if it was given half the chance.
The group leave the scene, accompanied by the relieved and happy applause of the audience finally allowed to breathe and smile at what has been witnessed.
As they depart, the circled crowd swells around the sculptures.
People stand to look at what has been left behind, perhaps poking out a finger to feel the heat, or bending and craning their heads to peer into other angles.
The circle of safety has tightened, the pieces are under the guardianship of us now
at least until rehoused
replanted from the ground at which they sprung.
And as I leave, I am leaving with a thousand images and a thousand accompanying thoughts.
I am left also with one great feeling and one great question.
When was the last time I cared so deeply for an act of which I had no part? and the answer
but of course I had a part.
25.06.25