Kimbal Bumstead

Summary of Practice

Kimbal Bumstead's ongoing research is into performer- participant relationships and the documentation of intimacy. He works with people as his subject matter - bodies and faces - exploring the issues surrounding physical contact and control through live interaction and sensory experiences. His work is about the here and now- about you and your relationship to touch.
Bumstead plays with the power relations that exist between the performer and the participant, where mutual vulnerabilities and insecurities are exposed, it's about being human and lovingly tortured.

There are two vital facets to his work that intertwine and support each other: the physical experience of interacting with another human through touch, and the process of documenting that experience through photography, video, drawing and email correspondence.

Art Hub

Touch Tent is a nylon dome tent with two people in it - a private installation for one audience member at a time. Inside there are rules. This is a performance with aims and objectives. You do not have to do anything. It's an experience for you. The rules will be broken once you go inside.

A man encapsulated in a cannonball wants to draw your portrait, he cannot see you but he knows you are there.

This performance is part of the artist's Touch Drawing project in which he constructs portraits based on the journey of touch across the face, discovering cheek bones, sockets, flesh, scars, he documents this journey with a stick of graphite on paper. Each sheet is then also marked with the audience member's email address. A few days later, they receive a photograph of their drawing.

Biography

Kimbal Bumstead graduated with a first class BA in Fine Art and Art History from the University of Leeds and is currently completing his MA in Performance and Theatre from Queen Mary University of London.

He has exhibited and performed solo work worldwide, in Russia, Mongolia, Vietnam and Poland. He recently performed and exhibited at the Beijing Biennale in China, Transit Station: Art as Event in Copenhagen, Denmark, Act Art 8, London, Wrong Love at the A Foundation, Liverpool, and North By Northwest at Tate Liverpool.
He lives and works in London.

Links

Artist Website