Marcia Farquhar works in performance, photography, painting, and object-making. Her site-specific works have been staged and exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, lecture theatres, kitchen showrooms, hotels, pubs, parks and leisure centres. Precariously balanced between the prescribed and the unpredictable - socially open, broadly embracing of circumstance, and resolutely focused in the live and unrepeatable moment, her performances make frequent and subversive use of popular cultural forms such as pop-psychology, TV cookery, the Punch & Judy show, the fashion catwalk and the guided tour. Her work is conceptual in nature, but deeply personal, drawing on personal observations and the intricacies of interacting in everyday life.
Revisited every seven years, this performed show focuses on clothing and the absurdity and desire attendant to dressing for everyday life.
A functioning outdoor lecture theatre constructed in a roadside refuse skip, and an ad hoc lecture series of variable proportions. A roadside attraction in which invited speakers and passers-by lectured on what should be trashed and what not.
The result of what Marcia calls intimate casting, these cakes began as homemade and edible but were transitioned into an inedible future with the help of fellow artist Jane Asher.
An outsized rocking horse, a belated fulfillment of childhood wishes, delivers the full measure of oddly retarded adult behaviour, as the rider addresses notions of Englishness, class, the absurdity of language, Lewis Carroll, equestrian statuary and all matters equine, from Thelwell to Freud via Leonora Carrington and DH Lawrence.
2018 SHOW, Dilston Grove, Cafe Gallery Projects, London
2016 AudioArthole, online (ongoing project)
2016 Acts of Clothing, City of Women, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2016 Rooty Tooty, performance, film and ice cream, Whitstable Biennale
2016 Rosebud, Buffet d’Art, Berlin Which Patterson, Camden Arts Centre, London
2016 Vox Box, performance lecture, LADA, London
2015 12 Shooters, screening, Whitechapel Gallery, London
2015 Vox Box, Matt’s Gallery, London.And I, 8 hour film with Reynir Hutber
2015 Old Dears, Chelsea Theatre, London
2015 Heart of Glass, Saint Helens
2015 Autoplayer, Steak House Live
2014 Larger Than Life, Grand Union, Birmingham
2014 Pushing Sixty, ongoing writing commission, Berlin
2014 Mind Your Heads, O’Toole Theatre, Newark, Lincolnshire
2014 With Singles, Horse Hospital, London
2014 The Long Haul, PSI, Stanford University, California
2014 Acts of Clothing, Pallazo Zenobio, Venice
2014 Mollusc, LIMBO, Margate
2014 Goldfish Memory, Royal Academy, London
2014 Flaxman Exchange, UCL, London
2014 Signing In, Woburn Square, London
2014 Another Ride, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire
2012 Mind Your Heads, performance and installation, The Friary, Lincoln
2012 Split Guitars and Other Tales, Brighton Marina, Brighton
2012 Chapter 61: Stubb Kills a Whale, MOBY-DICK BIG READ (reader), mobydickbigread.com
2012 Dressing for Four, MOBY-DICK BIG READ (Chapter 71 as artist), mobydickbigread.com
2012 Open University, Bournemouth beachside, Bournemouth Third Eye, Tintype Gallery, London
2012 1,OOO Contradictory Theories, Boscombe, Bournemouth Damp Squib Show, LUPA, London
2012 The Horse is a Noble Animal, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire
2011 The Common Room, radio play, Resonance 104.4 FM.
2011 Absent Friends, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham The Open University, Trashing Performance, London.
2011 The Horse is a Noble Animal, Compton Verney, Warwickshire
2011 Onwards Tour, SLG /Southbank, London
2011 Mothball, Barbican, London
2011 Fresh Tips, Queen Mary College, London
2010 The Horse is a Noble Animal, Tatton Park Biennial, Tatton Park, Cheshire
2010 The Omnibus, National Review of Live Art, The Arches, Glasgow
2009 To The Shelter, in ‘Dead Season’, Substation, Margate
2009–10 12 Shooters national tour: Horse Hospital, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; Bluecoats, Liverpool; Chapter, Cardiff; Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham and The Arches, Glasgow
2009 Catwalk, Brr Festival, Porto, Portugal
2009 Publication of Marcia Farquhar’s 12 Shooters, 192 pages, cloth-bound; Live Art Development Agency, London
2009 Spectral Sisters, Myatt's Fields Park, London
2009 Draw On, in ‘Drawing Exchange’, Spike Island, Bristol
2009 Swazzled Reading, in ‘S.C.U.M. Manifesto’, Chelsea College of Art, London
2009 Anonymous Gift, in ‘Base Campment’, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow
2008 The Dangerous to Know Society, in ‘That Beautiful Pale Face Is My Fate (For Lord Byron)’, Nottingham Contemporary, Newstead Abbey, Nottingham
2008 Black and White and Red All Over, Arnolfini, Bristol
2008 Always Something There to Remind You, in ‘Aurora Borealis’, Spedition, BremenIn & Out of Institutions, with Mark Macgowan, Synergy Center, Camberwell, London
2008 12 Shooters, National Review of Live Art, Tramway, Glasgow
2008 FARCO, in 'ARCO 08', Madrid
2007 The Open University, in ‘Polytechnical Institute for the Study of the Expanding Field of Radical Urban Life’, Archway, London
2007 Up My Street, in ‘Rational Rec’, Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London
2007 12 Shooters premier, South London Gallery, London
2007 The Behind Closed Doors Tour, in ‘Check In Check Out’, Live Art UK, GreatEastern Hotel, London
2007 Phoning In, in ‘4.33’, Bregenz
2007 The Better Picnic, in ‘Rights of Way’, Southwark Park, London
2007 The Interpretation of Everyday Life, in ‘Surrealist Ball’, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
2007 Come Back From Nowhere, Queen Mary College, University of London, London
2007 Nuts In May, CCA, Glasgow
2007 Lights On, No One at Home, in ‘Weltuntergang’, Galerie Crystal Ball, BerlinA Tale About A Tale About A Tail, in ‘Entertainment... Promise!’, W.S. Bartlett, London
2007 Acts of Clothing 7-Up, National Review of Live Art, Tramway, Glasgow
2007 Miss Memory Recalls, in ‘Based on a True Story’, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork
2007 Marcia Farquhar Is Sitting By The Telephone, in ‘So Sad’, Guy Hilton Gallery, Berlin/London
2006 The Hole in the Ground Tour, walking tour for Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham
2006 Lucky Dip, in Duckie’s ‘EuroShame 2006’, The Coronet, London
2006 Untitled Bad Drawing, In 'Bad Drawing', University Galleries, Cincinatti
2006 The Rake's Progress (Audio Guide), Sir John Soane's Museum, London
2005 The Cabinet of Horribly Violent Glove Puppets, in ‘Variety Acts’, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
2005 Alas Poor Humpty, Betsy’s Salon, London
2005 Bingo Calling, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
2005 The Doctors & Dreamers Game, South London Gallery, London
2005 From Under Milk Wood, STAR Radio, Cardiff
2005 Beano to Blustons, coach tour for Architecture Week, London
2005 Pool of Fun and Games, home/Camberwell Leisure Centre, London
2005 Fur Ball Revisited, Bonnington Gallery, NottinghamThe Londoners, Toynbee Hall, London
2004 Go Tell it to the Mountain, Szuper Gallery, Hong Kong
2004 Fortune Cookie, home, London
2004 Good Girl Bad Girl, Tor 47, BremenTo the Power of Ten, Camberwell Leisure Centre, London
2004 In Conversation, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2004 You’re Mine Tonight, in ‘Tonight’, Studio Voltaire, London
2004 52 People Wearing the Same Suit, in ‘Sir Eel’, Redux, London
2004 Reading in On Kawara’s One Million Years, Trafalgar Square, London
2004 You Will Find Love in a Public Place, with Mark Noll, Galerie Herold, Bremen
2003 Joy of Cooking, and La Farquhar, in Silke Thoss’ Big Shit Show, ‘Niemand ist eine Insel’, Bremen
2003 Of Course She Jumped, in ‘Independence’, South London Gallery, London
2003 Spirit Icing, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2003 ‘Hair the Show’, Tablet Gallery at the Tabernacle, London
2002 Kitchen Front, Habitat Chelsea, London
2002 Where Was I?, in ‘Sum of the Parts’, South London Gallery, London
2002 Vestaire, ‘Club’, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers
2002 Art Pal, Hamburg/London
2002 Spring 2002, with Mark Noll, Kunstlerhaus, Hamburg
2002 Readings from Gina Pane, with Caroline Bergvall, Arnolfini, Bristol
2001 Crash Course, in ‘Brr Festival’, PortoSoap, Design Museum, London
2001 Coming Round Again, in ‘Being Close’, South London Gallery, London
2001 Cloakroom, ‘Club’, Beaconsfield, London
2001 Victim of Crime, Design Museum, London
2000 O is for Rocket, H is for Shark, with Jem Finer, ‘Studio Air’, Tram #8, Helsinki
2000 Afternoons: Content May Vary, in ‘Deptford X’, Pepys Estate, London
2000 Museli and Metzger, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London
2000 Surprise Surprise, Virgin Megastore, London
2000 I’ll Never Forget, Westland Place Gallery, London
1999 81 Stories, in ‘Coffee Time’, Crowbar, London
1999 Acts of Clothing, in ‘Intimate House’, South London Gallery, London
1999 Walking Talking Living Yarn, in ‘Spin’, British Library, London
