Sheree Rose
Artist’s Quote
SM was a really important aspect of our lives. We believed in it enough to pour all of our energy into making SM a national movement and creating public and community spaces for it.
Luminary’s Quote
rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…. – Gertrude Stein
Stein, Gertrude. “Sacred Emily,” Geography and Plays, New York: Dover, (1922) 1999.
Bio
The performance, photography and video work of Los Angeles based artists, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose shook, rattled and rolled across the United States in the late 1980’s beginning with “Nailed” a performance at Olio, a small space in Silverlake, Los Angeles, that was notorious for Flanagan nailing his scrotum to a board, Rose cutting into the breasts of a woman strapped to a cross, which caused grown men to faint, and drew the attention of Jesse Helms, a United States senator, which ended much funding of the National Endowment of the Arts, and rallied artists to declare “Art is not a Crime!” In 1992-1994. Flanagan and Rose exhibited their extreme show, “Visiting Hours” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York . After Flanagan’s death in 1996, the documentary, “Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist” won a prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Rose was commissioned by Japan to produce “Boballoon” a 20-foot inflatable statue, complete with leather straightjacket and 4- foot erect penis, which was exhibited at Big Space in Tokyo. Rose has continued to show her photography at international galleries, including the Tate Modern in Liverpool, Country Club and Coagula Galleries in Los Angeles. She has done a number of cutting-edge performances, including “Corpse Pose” at various venues, and “Breaking Borders” at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California. Beginning in 2010 Rose has collaborated with English performance artist, Martin O’Brien, both in London and in Los Angeles, including “Do with Me As You Will”, “Dust to Dust”, and “If It Were the Apocalypse (I’d eat you to stay alive). In November 2016, they performed a major installation, “The Viewing”, a posthumous concept by Flanagan at the DaDaFest in Liverpool, England.