Anita Ponton

Anita Ponton is a multi-disciplinary artist based in London and Los Angeles. She was educated at Central St. Martins School of Art and at Goldsmiths College (London) where she gained her doctorate. Trained as a painter/sculptor, she now works principally in performance, situating her body as site, as process and as object.

Her work has been exhibited/performed internationally, including events and shows at the ICA (London), Franklin Furnace (New York), Oriel Mostyn Gallery (Wales), the Venice Biennale and the Liljevalch Kunsthalle (Stockholm). Performance festivals include the Exit Festival (Helsinki), 7A11D festival (Toronto), Edgy Women (Montreal), Mountain Standard Time Festival (Calgary). Inspired by film-noir and the cinematic, the work has been profiled internationally in a variety of ways, from performance festivals to private galleries. My new works and projects are an investigation into the relationship of the (female) body to visibility, to representation, to space and to technology.

I work in performance, video & film, sound & installation. In my performances I assume various iconic personae, creatures who are always situated as trapped, or on the edge of breaking down. Trapped by their psychosis, caught in the light or nailed to the wall, something of them always escapes, always exceeds. Not explosively for sure, but through a trembling, a nose bleed, through tears or the relentlessly repeated gesture. They are not characters but personae, aspects of myself. I disappear as they emerge. In general terms the work is cinematic in nature and hysterical in execution.