BALANCE

Change is reciprocal. You can’t change something without it changing you too.
How has work impacted your body? How has it changed your functionality?
Gillian stands on one end of a balanced plank and on the other end is a large block of concrete. She walks along the plank to the concrete and chips away at the concrete with a chisel, occasionally returning to the other side to check their relative weights until the see-saw balances perfectly. The concrete becomes a sculptural equivalent of Gillian. A likeness in mass.
A self portrait, baring all the scars of the work that made it.
Adam & Gillian have designed a modernist, durational performance that results in a sculptural installation.
The work speaks to their established practice of durational performance installation, but is also a personal reflection upon the performer’s relationship with their body. Gillian has osteonecrosis, a degenerative condition that limits her movement. They struggle to speak about this and how it relates to their practice and have decided that the best way to communicate it is through their work together. Using the performance as a focal point to involve audiences and other artists in a discussion around how we see ourselves and how that influences what we make and do.
We invite people to use this performance as a focal point for discussions and reflections around their own body, how work has shaped it, and how they view it.
‘Potent, unsettling and discomforting, about success and failure, endurance and breakdown.’ – Lynn Gardner, The Guardian.
BALANCE has been supported by IOU Creation Centre, Lancaster Arts, The Peter Scott Gallery, MIMA – Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, through the Turner on Tees programme for Turner Prize 2026. Funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.