Spike Mclarrity (London, United Kingdom): All dressed up and nowhere to go

This piece is a response to being isolated at home, no where to go. Confined to a living room unable to mix with the outside world. Four walls, a door, a window, a camera, the internet. The living space becomes a blank space of possibilities.

Zygmund de somogyi collaborating with Spike Mclarrity with his music titled “Unopened Letters” album.

BIO: Spike is a UK based artist who currently lives and works in London but is originally from Scotland. spike studied at Kingston University where he did a three year degree in fine art graduating in 2010. He also did a Masters in Performance and visual practice at Brighton university and graduated in 2012 with a distinction. He has dedicated full time to his practice within the performance community and sees himself as a duration based conceptual artist. Spike has been travelling to Japan for the last seven years, where he stays for a month and collaborates with local Japanese artist as well as attending performance festivals such as NIPAF and holding solo shows. He has also travelled to Phillapines, Germany, Barcelona, Pakistan, France and the UK. His work generally explores male identity, as well as working with masks, trying to explore what is underneath. He is more widely known as The Barnes White Rabbit where the UK and world press outed him in 2016, though he still performs once a month welcoming in the new month dressed as a rabbit where he sits on a wall by the Thames River in South West London from 7am-9am. Since the current pandemic, being isolated presents many new experiences, the sense of limitation, social distancing, keeping away from the familiar and refined to staying at home. There are many layers of limitations and self inflicted limitations, this has led to many new collaborations on line, it has also opened up new opportunities and new experience, being able to have contact with people from all over the world via the internet all from one place, travelling without travelling. Is this the new way of being? ARTIST’S WEBSITE

Zygmund de Somogyi: Raised in a suburb on south-west London to a Filipino family, Zygmund deSomogyi grew up listening to a combination of Western Classical Music andheavy metal, gaining a taste for heavy music through bands such as LinkinPark, Architects and Enter Shikari. At the age of 18, he moved away fromLondon to pursue a degree at the University of Leeds. It was at this timehe started composing for solo piano, influenced by composers such asYiruma, Ludovico Einaudi and Yann Tiersen. He wrote and recorded two demoalbums in his student halls before graduating with a BA in Music.ARTIST’S WEBSITE