Preview: Anthony Schrag – Wrasslin'

Photo courtesy the artist

Exhibition: Anthony Schrag – Wrasslin’, The Punch and Judy Gazebo, Margate Beach, February 20 2010

Scrapping on Margate beach sounds like the antithesis of art, but this Saturday artist Anthony Schrag will be on hand to wrestle with the public.

Advance publicity offers the chance to use him as a “human punchbag”. It claims that Schrag, who is no Giant Haystacks, is tired of culture which plays it safe.

“There is certainly a sense of danger in letting strangers do what they will with my skinny little body,” the artist has said. “That is what makes the project interesting”.

All bouts will take place in a giant striped tent designed as a homage to – who else? – Mr Punch. For Schrag, the puppet is “a symbol of joyful disorder”.

Violence, he explains, holds an important place within history and mythology and is undeserving of its bad reputation.

“We sometimes forget about its cathartic ability as a great unifier and a mirror to the common and raw beast inside us all,” he opines.

The Glasgow-based provocateur has previousy dressed up as a human piñata and strapped himself into a human catapult. Cerebral, it ain’t.

If you fancy your chances against Schrag, you can book your bout with the organisers or simply turn up and fight.

Written for Culture24.

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