To celebrate the 30th anniversary of EDGE 88, join curator Rob La Frenais for a special walking tour of the streets and sights of this seminal performance art festival.

Thirty years after EDGE 88, Helena Goldwater and Rob La Frenais (former editor of Performance Magazine and Director of EDGE 88), in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency (LADA), are revisiting this and other 1980s performance art events in Edge of an Era, a series of activities connecting influential artists from the 1980s with current generations.

Edge of an Era will shed light on underrepresented performance art histories that have had a significant influence on current art practice. This first phase of the project has involved five new artistic commissions, archival digitisation and workshops in London and Northumberland.

Programme:

5.30pm - Walking Tour

A walking tour of the street and sites of EDGE 88 in Clerkenwell will depart from St James’s church at 5.30pm. The tour will last for one hour and be led by Rob La Frenais (original curator of EDGE 88).

Spaces are limited and booking for this is essential. Please do so on this page.

7pm - Presentations, Screenings and Performances

The event will include introductions from Helena Goldwater, Rob La Frenais and Alex Eisenberg (LADA), the launch of the project website, as well as dialogues, screenings and presentations from some of the original EDGE 88 artists (full list of artists to be announced soon).

Across the evening we will also present a series of specially commissioned new works by artists who have responded to the archive that we have been collating as part of Edge of an Era.

Booking is essential and can be done separately here.

About Edge of an Era
In the late 1980s, Performance Magazine (1979-1992) started presenting some of the first site specific performance art events in the UK, including Art in Danger, At the Edge and Last Sweat of Youth at the Diorama and AIR Gallery. This culminated in EDGE 88, one of London’s first site-specific performance/installation festivals, which was attended by artists such as Helena Goldwater, who was at the start of her career. Thirty years later, Helena Goldwater and Rob La Frenais, in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) are revisiting this and other 1980s performance art events.