To mark International women’s Day on the 8th of March two artists Melanie Thompson and Jessica P created a live event in the garden of Heart of the Tribe Gallery.
Through simple actions of marking each tiny stone in the path through the garden with chalk they honoured all women who have gone before them and all women who are and will be active and creative in the future.
The 3 hour performance was streamed live on the Heart of The tribe Facebook page and can be viewed there in full. Below is a 5 minute film about the event.

Creating Hands / Action / Real

“Jessica P and I have just started working together as artists and wanted to make an initial event to see what we could do together. Jessica suggested International Women’s Day as a starting point and we began to meet every Friday over the last 3 months to develop idea’s for a live event on March the 8th.

I always need to locate myself in site, so I suggested the Gallery’s garden and using the path and it’s many stones as a way to mark the day. After that we found all the idea’s came quite quickly and surprisingly easily.
Jessica suggested the 3 conversation break’s that happened throughout the 3 hour event where we would discuss our process and inspirational women.

Also she wanted to use charcoal to mark with, I wanted to use white chalk so then we decided to reflect that in our clothing for the performance, responding to the endless oppositional forces, black and whiteness we are always dealing with.

The event was durational because it was based on the actual act of marking every stone as a celebration of all the women past present and future in our world.

The overlapping of the marks when we met on the path became about the collaborations that can occur when you share an experience. The washing away of all the marks at the end of the 3 hours was very important for both of us,

we were here ! now we are gone ! Remembering and forgetting. ”

Melanie Thompson March 2021