Materials are composed as symbols of the elements within the human body, mind and landscape to create poetical performances that are imbued with memory and imagination.

Resonating with the dynamic impermanence of the materials and hinting at transformation, my performances touch the mythical.

Moving the body within time and place “To cross a territory, to walk, to open a path, to recognise a place, to comprehend symbolic values, to invent a geography”5

Patience (Mirror 2009)

"Through the 'negative space' a void exists so that the 'ingredients can be seen in a moving way or dynamic way"4

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Photographed by Tamsin Drury (Green Room Arts)

Patience (2009)

The skin, bones, and the landscape of our brief encounter.

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(Twelve minutes; white satin, net curtain, white chalk)

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Photographed by Mark Doyle.

Transmerge (2008)

Like a refugee, exchanging earth with earth, from one place to another 'to cross a territory' along The Hope Valley train line.

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Transmerge is an artistic desire to merge body and land for peaceful purposes without boundaries. Prehistorically land art may have been used to define boundaries, and ownership of the land to indicate beliefs. These boundaries of land and people continue today causing global and personal conflict. Land and people are separated by differences that can be transformed into a merger of unique parts at peace with each other, ritualised in the performance of Transmerge.

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" The impassioned inhabitant digs and re-digs, making its very depth active. The fact is not enough, the dream is at work. When it comes to excavated ground, dreams have no limit."3

(Two days; suitcase, dress, trowl, shroud and earth)

To view the full project visit http://www.beckybowley.blogspot.com/

Photographed by Julian Hughes.

Shadow (2008)

A walk: Brighton seashore to falmer manor house; Falmer manor house to Brighton seashore; carrying a body of sand.

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"A system of empty spaces (the sea of the archipelago) through which it is possible to drift"2

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(Eighteen hours; blue dress, large suitcase and sand)

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Photograph by Mark Doyle

Still Changing (Window 2006)

The body as reality, the body as myth, the body in time and place.

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"It is as though something fluid had collected our memories and we our-selves were dissolved in this fluid of the past" 1

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Photographed by Mark Doyle

Still Changing 2005

Constantly knitting, the knit work constantly dissolves into water. Sitting still, but for the hypnotic movement of working hands and of threads coming undone, dissolving into water.

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With every line created, a line dissolved. Still Changing is an embodiment of impermanence and pure dynamic process. An elusive labour of the psyche, Still Changing marks the activity of knitting as a reflection on the reality of the body, and the body as myth, subverting traditional images of work and lesiure.

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(Nine hours, nine days performance; ash wood, glass, water, white slip and socks, soluble fabric, knitting needles)

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Photographed by Julian Hughes