Edge Biennale
16th May - 14th June 1992
A site-specific show with venues in London and Madrid .
La Primera Cena: Calle Segovia 5, Madrid
Attendant: Derelict underground public toilet, Christ Church, Spitalfield, London
La Primera Cena, 1992, Cow skin, table, chair and hand-blown silvered glass
Attendant was located in an abandoned public toilet in front of a church in Spitalfields. The underground toilet had a set of faded green railings and a stairway leading down to a tiled space. The stairway divided in two, on one wall of glazed bricks a painted sign directed “Irish” and on the other “English”. A small attendant’s room was below the stairs, illuminated by a green light.
The space opened up to a line of broken urinals along the wall. A set of bronze urinals in the form of the islands of Britain and Ireland hung above the drain. Below the bowls the urine flowed through penises as drainage pipes. They were inclined towards one another and when used the urine met and poured as one stream into the drain . Attendant implied an underground relationship that perhaps manifests differently above ground.
La Primera Cena (The first Supper) was located in a stairwell on the ground floor of a nunnery. Just inside the entrance of the tall dark building in central Madrid a small space was separated by bannisters, where nuns had ascended the stairs to their domestic quarters above. A table stood covered with the skin of a cow in the middle of a faded circle of broken floor tiles in the isolated space. A chair was pulled up to the udder end of the skin. A set of twelve goblets surrounded the table - the elaborate chalices were blown in glass and silvered; six were rounded forms and six elongated, each topped with a narrow hole.
List of works (click to expand)
La Primera Cena, 1992, Cow skin, table, chair and hand-blown silvered glass, Variable dimensions
Attendant, 1992, Urinals: cast bronze map-urinals, and handpainted signs, Urinals: 100 x 90 x 30 cm