All of the artists in Perform use art to puzzle out the complicated ways in which performance plays a part in our daily experiences. All of them help us understand the world in which we live.

Each of us is a performer. Every day, we act out individual roles and take part in private and collective rituals handed down by society. In our relationships with others, we hide behind masks and assumed personae; and when we interact with the objects, spaces and environments around us, we follow established patterns of behaviour set down by history and convention, playing out performances everywhere we turn. In such a world, it is no surprise that the line between art and life is sometimes blurred.

This unique exhibition in a book presents some of the most challenging art to address the place and function of performance in the contemporary world. Arranged into themed ‘rooms’, it reflects a wide variety of artistic attitudes and practices. Some artists present collaborators as the living, performing objects of their work, while others turn the audience into the main protagonists in the creative process.