Twenty Truant Shapes

Curated by Sharples as part of the GLOAM SHORTS programme and Sheffield Showcase 2024, ‘Twenty Truant Shapes’ was a durational performance by Nathan Walker that unfolded across twelve hours. GLOAM SHORTS is a programme of time-sensitive works that are purposefully short-lived, showcasing transient, non-static practices.

The performance comprised an installation of low structures and apertures that framed Walker’s body in parts – a site where language, speech, and memory were also dissected. A burnt orange tarp was stretched across the architecture of the gallery, dividing the space while shrouding, concealing and splitting the performer’s body in intervals. The materials used – sheep’s wool, stones, dried thistles, carabiners, ropes, white neck collars, c-clamps, and candles – are both utilitarian and symbolic. Many were sourced from Walker’s family home and region of West Cumbria, grounding the work in a sense of place and personal geography.

In its formation, the performance welcomed tensions between interior and exterior registers of sound and space, visible and invisible bodies, and light and heavy forms. The tarp, for example, both concealed and revealed Walker’s body, the wool absorbed sound, and the c-clamps and stones acted as weights to stabilise and hold down lighter objects. Sound became material: an uttered word muffled in the folds of the tarp, or amplified by the surrounding space. The audience, too, was relational – formative in shaping the work through their presence, closing the separation between observer and performer. This was articulated by Alexander Stubbs – a writer exploring the connections between climate, folklore, and the expanded field of curation – who attended the performance and wrote a short essay in response. In ‘I went camping once, too’, he wrote: ‘moving, adjusting, readjusting, uttering single words […] Eventually we left, but not before becoming part of it all. As our hands lifted the carabiner, and we grazed the tops of our heads on the corner of the straps tugging the tarp into place, we shared a moment with the body in hiding. And it stirred something in me. A forgotten dream, or something else. In that small square room, all at once we had wild camped [...].

Twenty Truant Shapes held space for all things transient: speech acts, fractured grammar, and the truant shapes of half-seen bodies, temporarily slowed and held in suspension.

Walker works across and between performance art and poetry, exploring both the body and the page as sites for vocal exploration and the manipulation of sound and speech. Their performances often take place over extended durations, sometimes several hours, during which time Walker constructs spaces of intense listening and attention. They often describe their work as ‘action poetry’, reviving the term associated with sound poetry to consider experiments with language as physical, material and embodied.

Exhibited as part of Sheffield Showcase 2024.
Reviewed in ‘I went camping once, too’ – by Alexander Stubbs.
Supported by Sheffield City Council & York St John University.