Nicholas Currie, Something to call my own, 2025

Laura wiped Keen’s curry powder off my chin. I didn’t know it was there, but I had embraced Nick, who had the ochre-coloured powder on his tee-shirt. I wrapped him in a bearhug after his performance, and the curry powder moved from him to me. From Currie to me. His performance moved me too, and not just me, everyone in the room felt something. Unmistakably, something inside. The performance was part of Something to call my own, a site-specific installation by Nicholas Currie, exploring the nature of shelter and home. 

The work centred on a wooden platform that the artist transformed on opening night. When the lights went off, he strode purposefully onto the staging he’d laid out just days earlier. The platform was arranged in an orderly, geometric shape: five triangles pieced together like a tangram puzzle. He gently took off his shoes and socks, placing them down neatly. The tension began as his body contorted to move the triangular shapes around the floor. His outstretched limbs struggled, pushed, and strained, working to make something to call his own. Somewhere to put his shoes down, carefully. He wrapped himself inside the triangles, curled up, his body a part of the construction. Wood as a skin, pyramid as cocoon.

Words by Anita King