Apr – June 2007, Art Space 2
Leslie Hill (USA) and Helen Paris (UK) are artists who work in performance, video and film. In this project they explored ideas of longing and belonging. These photographs were taken during their road trip through the vast landscapes of the American desert. Most of the text for their new performance piece (be)longing was written as they travelled from Hill’s birthplace near White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico across the high desert mountains to Monument Valley, Utah and Sedona, Arizona.
‘I was born in a sandstorm in a trailer in an oil field in southeastern New Mexico. Down by the border, near Mexico way. Near White Sands, the largest gypsum desert in the world. When you see a yucca at White Sands, what you think you are seeing is a four-foot yucca on top of a 30-foot dune, but what you are actually looking at is the top of a 34-foot yucca. That’s a kind of belonging I just don’t have. That’s the kind of belonging I long for’.
Leslie Hill
Hill and Paris formed Curious in 1996 and have performed and exhibited widely in the UK, US, Europe, Australia and Asia.