The upcoming Wild Gift Festival, 26th May-1st June, 2006 is a festival of live art which features new work by eight internationally acclaimed artists. According to Wild Gift, what brings the artists of this festival together is their signature style: A commitment to theatricality, spectacle, artifice – and utterly serious content! Just as there was a reaction in the 90’s to “Cool School” Art, so there has been a reaction to the more “conceptual” manifestations of performance art.
The organisers of the Wild Gift festival have perceived a major shift in the area of live art practice in the last decade; “With regard to “Art”, including painting, installation art, and sculpture, it seems to us that a new artificiality has come into vogue in the last ten years – and that this is significant, and shows the influence of the live arts on art in general. It’s a case of the surface and the deeper content being separate, and this being evident and significant.
