RUBY and PEARL - activist performance
Ruby [Fiona Clark] and Pearl [Raewyn Turner]
The original 1973 work where Ruby and Pearl performed and appeared on stage was at The Pink Pussy Cat Club - a strip tease club in Auckland. The performance was about female gender, visibility and it was anti establishment art. They repeated a similar performance in the University Elam Lecture theatre the same year. They also attended a Gay liberation rally in the University students courtyard area.
Ruby and Pearl performing at The Pink Pussy Cat club - a strip tease club in Auckland. 1973
Ruby and Pearl Video compilation of protests here. Ruby and Pearl On the 1st December 2017 Ruby and Pearl visited two Taranaki oil drilling and fracking sites to highlight a connection to Climate change. They visited the ‘Striking destination for contemporary art & experimental film in a towering mirrored space’ the Len Lye Centre funded by the oil and gas industry and the source of its funding the Todd Energy's Mangahewa A well site. The len Lye Centre has also been described as : a ‘modern day temple, reinterpreting Lye’s fusion of ancient and modern concepts, and his proposition for a ‘temple of art’.
The fences around the drilling sites are impassable with toxicity warnings –this is not a public space and the public are not welcome.
They turned their naked backs on the mirrored Len Lye Centre museum on which they placed a proscenium arch and regarded and preened themselves in their own mirrors.
In 2017 Ruby and Pearl are in their 60’s revising and remaking their discussion about power, borders, gender and the environment.
They also performed at the Todd Energy's Mangahewa A well site which is one of the source of its fossil fuel funding, and the Greymouth Petroleum Kowhai A Wellsite.
The fences around the drilling sites are impassable with toxicity warnings –this is not a public space and the public are not welcome.
Raewyn Turner appears in several photographs in Fiona Clark’s 2021 film ‘Unafraid’
