Hayley Newman

The Daily Hayley, 2001

For six months, between 1 January and 30 June 2001, I collected every daily and Sunday national newspaper. This assortment provided the source material for a series of newly commissioned performances occcuring at Matt’s Gallery over a consecutive 16-day period.

The newspapers informed the content of the performances, providing the physical material for props used in the work, and occupying a position within the exhibition space at Matt’s Gallery. 

Each day newpapers and magazines report news of national and international importance, translating events from contemporary daily life into image and text. I developed work out of the collective stories in individual papers, tracing occurences from their ‘life’ source through to textual report and back into ‘live’ event.

Eating 100 doughnuts in a day - Experiencing what it feels like to lie under 26 stone of earth - Saturating herself with self tanning lotion and gradually becoming more orange until the end of the exhibition period... Throughout the performances Newman’s identity will change as she transforms herself from a cow to David Beckham to Anne Widecome, from aggressor to victim and from Page Three model to chef. Wearing red contact lenses to give her continuous ‘red-eye’, the performances in The Daily Hayley promise to meditate on representation, agency and the absorption of information courtesy of the press.

Related artworks

The Daily Hayley artists’ book was published by Matt’s Gallery in 2004. The book is a box-set (11×35x49cm) containing a 10 minute video-clip and approximately 1500 B&W photocopies of research notes relating to the performances (ISBN 0 907623 45 X).

The Daily Hayley video (79 minutes, 2003) represents edited footage of the gallery performances. The video, directed by myself and edited by Gill Addison, was screened at Matt’s Gallery, Centre d’Arte Contemporaine, Geneva and CCA, Villnius (2003).

The performance and publication were made possible with the generous support of Arts Admin, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London Arts, The Arts Council of England and The Henry Moore Foundation

Photos: Hiroaki Enoki, Mario Schruff, Stephan Takkides and Terence McCormack.