Portrait of the artist as a young man, 2008

Portrait of the artist as a young man was a performance/installation that took place at Goldfish Contemporary Arts, Penzance, Cornwall in 2008.

The piece involved the artist Daryl Waller dressed up as an ape-man, caged in, making artwork based on information that visitors gave the gallery director when visiting.

This performance was viewable LIVE via an early streaming site called Ustream.TV

For the final week of the exhibition the room was opened up displaying the work created in full.

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Here follows the proposal to the gallery before the performance took place.

Explanation of performance piece

Performance piece to be held in the gallery involving the artist dressed as an ape-man. The “ape-man” will be  caged in but will have a private section the visitor cannot see into.

The ape-man will occupy the cage drawing and painting on the walls ceiling etc.

It will be made possible for the gallery visitor to fill out a simple form and post it through a slot into the cage for the ape-man to use to make a bespoke piece of artwork that the visitor can take away. 

Art will available to everyone, people will pay whatever they can, free if they can not pay.

The performance should explore ideas about freedom and spirituality, religion and time. 

The ape-man will be free to do as he pleases. The ape-man will become dirtier and dirtier with paint and ink as the weeks go on.

The illusion of freedom and safety is ever present, everything will be ok as long as he stays within cage, he exists to please the owner of the gallery, and himself. 

Art is exchanged for food, drink, warmth and shelter.

The cage will be empty for the final two weeks of the exhibition; the cage will be left untouched as the ape-man left it.

Man separates himself from all other species; he uses his sense of consciousness to claim righteousness and self-importance within the animal kingdom. He controls cages and consumes any species of animal in anyway he sees fit. For pleasure power ego and exploitation. To do so he avoids his own consciousness by learning to lie to himself, he uses all his creations to distance himself from responsibility for the actions that his conscious deems wrong. Along the way he creates right and wrong to justify his actions and control the actions of others who might threaten him. He creates a god in his own image to take ultimate responsibility for those things he would rather not claim, religion is mans ultimate scapegoat. Man creates angels and devils to guide him in an attempt to keep his lying conscious from getting him into too much trouble, and to blame for the actions he himself can not excuse.. He seeks to control and secure his life at every turn believing he deserves more with each new day. He works and saves to achieve more and more control over his life, he follows trends and ideas through popular opinion, he uses the opinions of the masses to secure his sense of righteousness. He then builds on these ideas to further separate himself from nature and even the rest of mankind.. All along caging himself, feeling more and more alone, feeling more and more afraid and confused with the world around him.. Fighting wars he does not understand. Paying taxes to a system he knows only as empire.. Breaking down all that is around him in terms of money class control ownership laws morals rules and gods all created and explained by his surroundings. When and if he stops to think for himself he will realize he is responsible for his own entrapment, and the animals he thinks he is above are free making all decisions based on personal instinct. The only true right or wrong. A personal decision made out of basic survival.

- Jesse Reno