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The Volcano Lady was originally performed when I was the Helen Chadwick Fellow at the British School at Rome, latterly it was re-performed at the opening of How to improve the world: 60 years of British Art at the Hayward Gallery (2006). In the performance I wear a costume designed to resemble an erupting volcano. Interested in the erotic status of Vesuvius (one of the final destinations of The Grand Tour, the precursor of modern tourism), I commissioned a costume that resembled a cloud billowing from the cone of a volcano. The costume is designed to invert as I do headstands, revealing red tights and flamed underskirts that resemble lava-flow. While at the School I made this series of self-portraits in which I billow and then erupt.

Biography
Hayley Newman (b 1969) received a BA at Middlesex University before gaining a Higher Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Slade School of Art. In 1995 she took up a DAAD scholarship in the class of Marina Abramovic´ at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg after which she was awarded the Stanley Burton Practice-based Research Scholarship at the University of Leeds, completing her PhD in 2001. She is currently a Graduate Tutor in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 2004/5, she was the recipient of the Helen Chadwick Arts Council of England Fellowship at the British School at Rome and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford. She has performed and exhibited widely and has had solo shows at Matt’s Gallery, London, The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Recent performances include Their feet should not touch anything solid, Camden Arts Centre, London; ffffashion, South London Gallery, London; Karoake Record Cutting, Barbican Art Gallery, London; Make-up/wake-up, Rialto, Rome; Volcano Lady, British School at Rome. Recent group exhibitions include Chronic Epoch, Beaconsfield Gallery, London; Her Noise, South London Gallery, London; Documentary Creations, Kunstmuseum, Lucerne; Resonance, Montevideo, Amsterdam, Camera/Action, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and Live Culture, Tate Modern, London. Her current interest in Rubbernecking describes the act of slowing down, craning the neck and straining to look and involves a series of trips to places reported in the daily news. Hayley Newman is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London.

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