Abby Manock’s LOVE IS ALL AROUND is a performance involving a sequence of exchanges and transformations, starting and ending with the creation of an artwork. Inherent to the work is the love/hate relationship between the joy and reward of creating “things,” and the physical and financial responsibility of caring for and preserving what has been created.
Back in April of 2008, Abby drew 50 drawings of bottles at her studio in Brooklyn, the outline of each drawing was made while listening to the Joan Jet cover of the theme song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show: “Love is All Around” played once through. The drawings were offered for sale online as a fundraiser for her trip to Mexico for the Performagia 2008 festival. She sold enough drawings to cover her ticket.
Once in Mexico City, she took to the streets in search of rocks, cardboard boxes and glass bottles, as site-specific objects for the performance. When she had sufficiently collected enough of each, she painted all them white to unify and identify them as art objects, and drew a face on each one, animating them to become cast members in the performance.
During her presentation at Academia de San Carlos, she brought the sequence full circle by making new boxes out of old boxes, first smashing the bottles in the old box with the rocks, sealing each rock with a set of bottle shards inside a new box, on the outside of which she drew a bottle with a rock inside, all paced repeatedly to the tune of Joan Jett’s cover of Love is All Around.
The following 50 drawings were created as the first phase of the LOVE IS ALL AROUND project. Photos, video and relics of the performance in Mexico City will be included as part of an upcoming project. Please stay tuned for updates. Thanks.
-Gallery Diet