(gg)
LONDON (Reuters) - Animal rights activists have
described as "sick" a live art performance involving a
naked woman cradling a dead pig for four hours.
Kira O'Reilly's show, called "Inthewrongplaceness"
will be performed at the Newlyn Art Gallery in
Penzance, southwest England, later on Friday.
James Green, the gallery's director, defended the
show, saying that the audience would be controlled,
with one person at a time watching the performance for
up to 10 minutes each.
"In terms of the gallery's view, we feel very strongly
that we should provide audiences in the region with
opportunities to see the kind of works that they have
to go to London to experience," he told Reuters
He added that the gallery "had not received a single
direct complaint" about the planned show, one of
several live performances making up the Tract live art
programme.
But a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals (PETA) called the performance "sick".
"As Miss O'Reilly seems to depend on the shock of
using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the
talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest
she take up a day job instead to pay the bills," she
said. "Cruelty is not entertainment."
On the gallery's Web site
www.newlynartgallery.co.uk, O'Reilly calls the
performance "a slow crushing dance with a pig for one
person at a time."
"The work left me with an undercurrent of pigginess,
unexpected fantasies of mergence and interspecies
metamorphoses began to flicker into my consciousness."
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