Craig McCorquodale is an artist based in Glasgow, working with the body’s ability to transcend its everyday self. He thinks of performance as a kind of combat sport - visceral, capricious, something bound up in spectacle.
He makes experimental performance, events and invitations for participation in a range of contexts, working with the aesthetic potential of professional and non-professional performers. He questions what’s at risk, who enters the stage and how young artists can make work at scale.
Recent live moments he has presented include:
A show with an embalmer and eight eight-year-old girls,
Dances between a 100 year-old and a butterfly, and a construction worker suspended by his ankles from a crane,
A 24 hour performance where 24 texts are exhibited in public space each hour of the day.
This work is inspired by and building from a movement of artists situating expanded social practices within headline performance. The images that ask us to recognise our own humanity in the struggle of another. As such, Craig’s work attempts to construct social sculpture and presents each body’s ability to be multiple, ordinary and ecstatic.
Performance People Places Provocations Aesthetics Conversations Dances Situations Processes Words Actions Invitations Scenographies
Performance People Places Provocations Aesthetics Conversations Dances Situations Processes Words Actions Invitations Scenographies
In 2023, Craig was awarded the Jerwood Arts New Work and in 2021 he was awarded the Jerwood Arts Live Work Fund.
He is currently developing new work supported by FABRIC, Tramway and Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. Has recently been supported by National Theatre of Scotland, Battersea Arts Centre, British Council and La Teatrería.
He has been Commissioned by Wunder der Prärie Festival at Zeitraumexit (Mannheim, Germany), Lyra (Edinburgh, Scotland) and Evergreen Brick Works (Toronto, Canada).
He has been a performer in Quarantine’s epic durational performance, 12 Last Songs. He regularly collaborates with 21Common and Mammalian Diving Reflex, and has toured nationally and internationally in these contexts, including: VIERNULVIER (Ghent, Belgium) as part of With Pleasure Festival, Theater Neumarkt (Zürich, Switzerland), Triennale Milano / Zona K (Milan, Italy), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, USA), Sydney Fringe (Sydney, Australia), Taranaki Festival (New Plymouth, New Zealand), Freedom Festival (Hull, UK), Brighton Festival (Brighton, UK) and the Made in Scotland Showcase at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018 and 2022.
In 2020, Craig graduated with a First Class BA Honours in Contemporary Performance Practice from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He was been working professionally in the sector since 2017.
Craig is always looking to work with new people in unexpected ways, so please reach out if you would like to commission him for a project or discuss a collaboration.
In 2022, this image by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan of Craig’s process for When the Time Comes was awarded Third Prize in the Richard Coward Scottish Portrait Awards.
The image depicts a brief moment just as we were beginning a run of the show - Tommy shot spontaneously and caught this fragment. I like the sense of anticipation, narrative and how we are pulled into the complexities of childhood experience but kept out of the gossip!
I especially love its duality with John Maxwell’s 1935 mural Children’s Games and Amusements. The mural became something of an obsession of mine throughout the process and was such a joy to make against. Its ideas around tableaux, social panoramas and a certain kind of Bruegelian scale influenced my work and are still evolving research enquiries for me. Perhaps more interestingly though, the mural was what saved this building from demolition after a coordinated community effort in 2000. It is now B-listed.
With Tommy’s image, there are now three artworks interacting here, and I’m so grateful for it.