Mark McGowan, 'The Withered Arm for Peace'
He once tried to sail 400 miles from South East London to Scotland in a shopping trolley (but failed after 17 days due to bad weather); he crawled from London Bridge to Canterbury with a rose between his teeth; he pushed a monkey nut along the pavement from Goldsmith's College in South East London to 10 Downing Street to protest against student fees. He's even eaten two entire foxes (strangely). Now artist Mark McGowan has secured his arm above his head and tied himself to an East London lampost in a performance set to last for two weeks.
'The Withered Arm for Peace' performance is taking place outside the Brick Lane gallery as part of its 'Peace Camp' show that runs throughout December. Wolfgang Tillmans and Gavin Turk have also donated works. "It's a protest act, to ask for peace throughout the world for Christmas; I just want the world to stop fighting", said McGowan when he embarked on his ordeal last Sunday. Two wooden splints form the scaffold for his right arm and strapping around his chest forces the arm to stay vertical. A hook on the splints feeds into an eye placed onto the lampost. "Obviously I leave the lamp post to go to the toilet, but my arm will not be lowered for the entire fortnight". "An Indian man stood for forty years with his arm raised once", said Brick Lane Gallery director Danielle Horn. Mark's got a lot of stamina; he'll be fine."
Passers-by have been massaging McGowan's arm to try and boost his spirits. Someone even bought him a cup of coffee without asking if he wanted it. At midnight on Sunday the 37-year old confessed to being tired and in some pain: "Well, it's not like a normal's day's work is it? The worst people to meet during a project like this are alcoholics and teenagers but I discovered a new brand of heckler today - the refuse collectors. They were calling me a 'w**nker' and a 'crackhead'. It's lucky I didn't do two arms, as I had originally planned. I'd have felt too vulnerable."
McGowan upset the tabloids three weeks ago when he laid down for a week on Birmingham New Street to impersonate a dead British soldier. "I've been reading various army blogs after Dead Soldier hit the press - they all say they want to Taser me. Then some old soldiers got through to me on the phone. They were really angry and upset, I didn't know what to say. I don't respond to nature; I can't go out to a field and do an oil painting." But McGowan revealed he will be returning to crawling next summer. "This time from London to Paris. I'm doing it in conjunction with Judy and Richard; they adopted me last year as their artist-in-residence. I'm making 40,000 rubber hands modelled on Richard Madeley's hands. I shall leave the Richard & Judy studio sometime over the summer on my hands and knees keeping one of the rubber hands in my mouth all the way. I'll do five miles a day so it should take me about six weeks - I'm really good at crawling so I should be OK. My friend will drive alongside me in a white Luton van with the other 39,999 of the hands in the back. As soon as I reach Dieppe I'll start giving out a hand to every French person I meet until they are all gone. I hope to give the final one to Jacques Chirac or some other head of state at the Arc de Triomphe. It will be a reconciliation for Agincourt."
'The Withered Arm for Peace' performance will finish on 26 December. For more information visit www.markmcgowan.org.
Laura K Jones
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