Can I Help You? offers free help to passers-by and the general public. There are no plans and no boundaries: anything goes, the only requirement is that we figure it out together.
“A beautiful, open intervention that allows people to find their own ways to shape it.” Mel Evans, Liberate Tate.
Stationed in a town centre or prominent shopping street, we are available to anyone and everyone for free help. Offered as one person to another, rather than particular skills or knowledge we come with a tool belt containing things we thought might be helpful:
…chewing gum, change for a tenner, an umbrella, a bin bag, The Little Book of Hope, string, a sewing kit, plasters, super glue, hand cream…
So go on, buy that extra bag of melons, there’s someone here to help you carry them home!
article with Mel Evans for The Scottish Journal of Performance
Can I Help You? came out of an invitation to make a piece of work for a festival that wanted to challenge how we respond to people who exhibit unusual or disturbed behavior in public.
- first presented at Bonkersfest with South London Gallery and Creative Routes (2006)
- toured to Hull, Wigan, Darlington, Rochester, Gloucester, and Paignton (2016)
- presented with multiple “helpers” as part of In Your Way festival in Cambridge (2018)
Rhiannon has presented numerous talks and workshops about this work, sharing her methodologies on relational performance in public space with organisations including Greenwich Docklands International Festival, Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow University, and Battersea Arts Centre.
Images 1-2 by Jerome Whittingham; 3, 7, 10 by Alexander Parsonage; 9 by Rob Irish; others by the artist.