03/07/2019, 6:00 pm,

William Joys: A One Man Show

, Kunsthalle Münster

A revue in which the artist William Joys personifies a range of objects that call into question the status of being oneself. What is it to objectify a subject: a solo performer, whilst ‘they’, or perhaps more appropriately ‘it’ are attempting to imbue objects with a sense of narrative and ‘life’? William Joys embodies a multiplicity of things: objects that might carry with them an illicit, an erotic and at times a complicit sense of purpose. Through a sequence of songs and tableaux: I am a lighthouse, Ready for the world, Whitest walls in town and Jack on the track, the revue represents the performer’s slippery relationship to himself. Questioning identity is of course a basis for a continuous shift: It is up in the air and it lingers there. In light of the recent expansion of the notion of being 'queer', as a potentially all-inclusive package, where a sense of self, of oneself, being absorbed into a community that is supposedly at odds with straightforward adventure, he imagines himself as something questionable, at times melancholic and always gay (as in joyful).

William Joys (b. 1989, lives and works in London) is a graduate from the BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths (2011) and the MA in performance at the Glasgow school of Art (2018). He is a founding member of Villa Design Group, exhibiting internationally, among others at MIT List Centre, Boston and MUMOK, Vienna. His recent performances include, Whitest Walls in Town, Performance Club at Raven Row, London, That perfect Italian time, Thank you very much residency, The Modern Institute, Glasgow and Each to every ship, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels.