Michael Mayhew
Michael Mayhew has been working in the new performance sector for 20 years. In that time he has engaged with a multiplicity of art forms that have often been inspired by the environments he finds himself in. His practice has seen him travel widely throughout the world, often stepping into new and untested locations, testing the ground for the development of new performance practice and processes.
Mayhew makes live art which responds to a particular time and place. Performances manifest according to what is happening in the world, whom he met that day, what he’s heard or witnessed, what matters to that particular audience in a particular place and time.
He makes work through a process of in-depth immersion, of gathering and collecting, of responding to the lives and life around him. The performative language he uses is determined by each location and its community. The aim is to create something truly of the moment, something unique, where the performance, the meeting between an audience and performer, is everything.
2006 saw Mayhew acquire a new studio space in Manchester, a dedicated producer, management support from PANDA and an ACE supported organisational development project. With this all in place, Mayhew has now begun to develop a host of new ideas.