David Cross in conversation with Cameron Bishop

We live in denial of the foreigner within due to the (often feigned) dexterous self-regard we bring to our social and spatial encounters. You, as the literal foreign body in your own work, inviting the participant to pump, breath, hold, slide or catch, deny that self-assurance, not only to the viewer but also to yourself. Framed at a psychosocial level the denial of the foreigner within plays out in all kinds of ways in our treatment of those others who are seen to breach our borders, at a personal, political and national level. The work you create, in this context, may be seen as an interrogation of the western subject’s conventional experience of territories, from the body, to the museum and to the nation. As you suggest, the physical and cognitive thresholds you give to the participant invite the unguarded moment, the other side of which prompts the viewer to ponder their physical relations to others, as fragmented, fragile beings. But key to this is you, the artist, who presents as partial and foreign inside these objects. How are these objects extensions of your own body, and your own athleticism?