Victoria Stanton and the Art of Transaction

Relational Performance

Bank of Victoria, 2001-present

Bank of Victoria CEO Victoria Stanton An ongoing life-art-corporate-subversion project, the Bank of Victoria was officially opened in June 2001. CEO Victoria Stanton randomly sets up shop providing consultation and cheques to those in need. In June 2003, the Bank inaugurated its official website, www.bankofvictoria.com.

As a relational performance, this project initiates individual encounters between "performer" and "audience." Ensuing interactions last anywhere from 5 minutes to half hour in this piece that explores our expectations (ranging from what "art" is "supposed" to be to what we as children imagined ourselves becoming as adults), and our varied and difficult relationships to money. By playing the role of CEO (and hence a position of supposed authority) I am (de)positing a grey area between "real" world and "fictional" space while dealing with the concept of "money" as a point of departure into examinations of familial/societal expectations, perceptions of "choice," the construction of desire, and self-definition.

As a website, the Bank continues to attract many curious surfers and potential customers, in particular for the Financial Partners Enterprise, a program seeking to match poor artists with rich patrons. If you are a rich patron, don't hesitate to contact me. I have a long list of poor artists waiting to be assisted.

Visit the Bank of Victoria

Bank of Victoria Performance History

  • March 2005: Toronto Free Gallery, as part of The Corporate World exhibition, Toronto, ON
  • April-June 2003: Espace Vox, taking up weekly residence during Art Qui Fait Boum!, Triennial of Emerging Artists, Montreal, QC
  • September 2001: Alizé, during the launch of esse Magazine #43, Montreal, QC

Menu/Please Choose an Item From the Menu/HOTEL, 2001-2003

HOTEL at The Holiday Inn, Edmonton, AB, as part of Visualeyez An exchange for confined spaces as presented in three locations over a two-year period. Individual encounters between "performer" and "audience" occurred in a small tent inside a gallery, then in a hotel room. In each location, the "audience" (comprised of one person) was invited to choose from a selection of four possible topics. Ensuing interactions lasted anywhere from three to fifteen minutes in this piece that explored notions of intimacy, risk, trust and blurred boundaries between art and life; artist and spectator.

Menu... Performance History

  • May 2003: The Holiday Inn, Edmonton, Alberta as part of the Visualeyez performance festival.
  • November 2001: Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON, presented during Reciprocité, a three-city performance exchange between Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
  • March 2001: Galerie SKOL, Montreal QC, as part of their annual fundraising event.

Cake Feeding Series, 2001-present

I have many food intolerances and I love to eat chocolate cake (number one on my "black list"). So, I eat it vicariously through feeding it to others – often from out of their own cupped hands. In this experience of feeding cake, I am interested in the immediate intimacy that is established, in having to navigate the potential awkwardness, in enacting a nurturing (and somewhat decadent) gesture, in negotiating the placement of a fork or spoon in someone's un-accustomed mouth. This is a slightly cumbersome, yet fulfilling and playful task. The inherent awkwardness and playfulness of such a gesture produces very mixed responses: welcoming, open, laughing mouths, slightly closed, uncertain (resisting) mouths. The piece continues to evolve (with participants feeding each other and myself acting as witness with a video camera) but the intentions remain intact: proposing a quotidian, seemingly banal act as a site of negotiation, deliberation and even celebration in this performance that challenges the audience to let down their guard and temporarily renounce their control. 

Weather (and context) permitting, the cake feeding performance is often dolled up with the beautiful "Cutlery Dress." This chiming sound-costume-sculpture of a dress was created in 2001, and has made several appearances.

Cake Feeding in Montreal and Melbourne

Feeding cake in Montreal and Melbourne

Cake Feeding Performance History

  • July 2008: Titled, Mange tes sentiments / Eat How You Feel, presented during the annual FIMA festival, in Montreal, QC. (without the dress). This time around, the 16" x 20" cake was cut into 2 x 2 pieces, each piece displaying a title, much like a "fortune" found in the centre of a Chinese fortune cookie (except on the outside, where guests could deliberately pick their message).
  • August 2006: Titled, Eat How You Feel, presented during the annual Overload Festival, in Melbourne, Australia (without the dress).
  • September 2005: Titled, Let Them Eat My Graduation Certificate, as part of the Concordia University 3rd Annual Juried Fine Arts Alumni Exhibition, Montreal, QC. In Let Them Eat My Graduation Certificate the cake (as indicated in the title) was a facsimile of my BFA diploma.
  • February 2004: Titled, Ikh Gib Dir Eppes Tzu Essen - I Give You Something To Eat, as part of the Rethinking the Body, Self and Subject in Performance Conference, hosted by Columbia University in New York City.
  • January 2004: Titled, Let Them Eat Cake, as part of the internationally web-cast event, Art's Birthday held at Studio XX in Montreal, QC.
  • June 2002: Titled, Evidence II, during the InterAzioni festival in Sardinia, Italy.
  • March 2002: Titled, Evidence, during the Festival Voix d'Amériques in Montreal, QC.
  • November 2001: Titled, (If) not for me, (if) not for you at Grunt Gallery as part of Live: The Vancouver Performance Art Biennale in Vancouver, BC.