Past Exhibition Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: S/HE IS HER/E
June 15–September 15, 2013
H/er first solo museum exhibition, S/HE IS HER/E, will showcase the breadth of P-Orridge’s art practice through over 100 works, dating from the mid 1970s to the present. With an art practice dating back to the late 1960s, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has reinvented and reintroduced h/erself as groundbreaking performance artist, pioneer of industrial music, “wrecker of civilization”, essayist, and, most recently, as pandrogyne. H/er singular and, at times, provocative creative practice has exerted a profound influence on visual artists and musicians alike. Genesis has performed in a number of music projects including Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and Pigface. A central focus for the exhibition is the Pandrogyne project – a complex and highly ambitious series of collaborative artworks by P-Orridge and his wife Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge (1969-2007). Frustrated by what they considered to be socially imposed limits on personal identity and on the language of true love, P-Orridge and Lady Jaye sought to merge their two identities, using plastic surgery, hormone therapy, cross-dressing, and altered behavior to create the pandrogynous being, “Breyer P-Orridge.” An act of love, the work explores how fully two people can integrate their lives, bodies, and consciousnesses. Lady Jaye passed away in 2007, and the project continues with Genesis embodying the entirety of Breyer P-Orridge.