2025 LiveStock Live: A live performance - Wall, at MART Gallery in Dublin, on 5th April 2025

photography: Serhii Shapoval and Julieann O’Malley

On Saturday, the 5th of April, I presented my first solo live performance, Wall, as part of 2025 LiveStock Live —a regular live art event hosted by MART Gallery in Dublin. This year’s edition was curated by Dublin based performance artist The Ljilja, who invited both the performing artists and the audience members to "step into a realm where body becomes a membrane of experience."

My Wall was a site-specific, intimate performance, performed in an empty gallery space bounded by four bare walls. The audience stood in the centre, free to move, watching me and shifting in response to the cues of my movements and gaze. They occupied the middle, I navigated the perimeter —creating a dynamic where my body assumed the role of a ‘working dog’, theirs a ‘dispersed flock’ I was subtly herding, then eventually splitting.

The work is intentionally open to interpretation, allowing the symbolism of its title and the performed gestures to resonate with each viewer’s subconscious. The walls were my only prop —my performance partner. Through physical engagement with them, I embodied a spectrum of meanings: wall as barrier or shield, as institution or home, as intimacy or exposure, as sanctuary or site of violence.

By contrasting these connotations through intensity of breathing, groans and other sounds I made, and through movement, stillness and eye contact, Wall invited reflection on space, both physical and psychological, and how it may shape our experience of vulnerability.

2025 LiveStock Live line-up: Vera Ryklova (Dublin), Wall; Louis Fleischauer (Berlin), Primordial Kaos; Paul Regan (Dublin), And With Your Spirit; The Ljilja (Dublin), Narikača [Keening Woman].