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In his review of ‘History Repeats Itself’ at Kunst-Werke (pg 27) Richard Grayson writes that ‘Taken as a whole, you suspect that … the practices might also be understood as constituting some sort of a search for new foundation myths.’ Art myths also unravel in interesting ways through re-enactment. At cubit Gallery last month, Artist Jimmy Roberts took Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece staged in Tokyo, New York and London in 1964, 1965 and 1966 as a starting point. Robert appeared in front of a crowed covered in layers of masking tape. Sitting down on some white paper, he quietly asked the audience to take a piece of masking tape, before speaking sentences memorised from the reviews of Ono’s original performances. Accounts of the London performance, which took place at the Africa Centre as part of the Destruction in Art Symposium, were prominent. The first audience member to participate misheard the instructions, and began tearing at the paper Robert was sitting on. Another attempted the same thing. It was kindly pointed out by a third that it was the tape to be removed, not the paper flooring. The awkward moments continued over the course of 40 minutes of slow revelation: not only of Robert’s body, but also of those who, one by one, walked forward and, mostly delicately, removed the pieces of tape from his body. Frustrations noticeably peaked when people started to take more than one piece, in an attempt to end or complete the performance: although one person over heard by Artnotes claimed that in these situations some sort of people always just like to stand stoically, in a kind of art masochism. Still, the insistently quiet, mantra-like words spoken by Robert were just perceptibly repeated twice, before he ended the performance by walking out of the room with a few layers of tape still on his upper back.

Ono herself famously restaged the work in Paris in 2003 again asking the viewer to ‘Come and cut a piece of my clothing wherever you like, the size of less than a postcard, and send it to the one you love.’ Robert matched Ono’s repeated invitation, and audience members restuck their own clothes and bodies, in an uncertain act of identification or solidarity with the performer. It would seem history, like masking tape, can clearly be used more than once. A video of the performance is being screened at the gallery until Februrary 17 as part of Robert’s solo exhibition, ‘Figure de Style’.