The works in Factual Actual are a development of Florence Peake’s process of drawing around her moving body on the horizontal surface of the paper. This technique was first used in a series of works exhibited at the artist’s solo exhibition at Bosse & Baum in 2017. The new works presented as part of Vortic capture the contrast of the imagined body versus the factual objective body. During the creative process, Peake is induced in the bodily sensations of having multiple limbs, many breasts, eyes on the back of her head and multiple genders layering on top of each other. The artist starts with lying on the paper and marking around her body, taking the gesture of the body down verbatim. She then starts marking the surface to recall sensations that emerge from her moving body. 

 Using her body as the main tool during the process of creation, Peake returns to the basics of form and methodology in her paintings made throughout last year. The artist made these works during a residency at La Becque, Switzerland during the Summer of 2020. They were made in lockdown and respond to Covid, heartbreak, loss, and loneliness in amongst figurative painted forms. A way of being inside troubled times, she made a repertoire of gestures from improvisations around grieving processes that were acted on and in the paintings; the figures in the paintings became observers to the gestures.

Florence Peake’s performance practice often takes the methodologies, gestures and actions of art-making as the subject and material: the actions involved in painting and sculpture and the labour that goes into the product behind the scenes. Peake is seeking to develop these artworks and extend their methodology into live performances with the help of performers in 2021.