19:30-20:30 25th JANUARY 2019
“St Alban and I were playing strip poker but neither of us had any cards...”
SEAGER opens its new gallery space with The Balls of Alban, a performance by Carl Gent, which sees a Dark Ages martyr and a 21st century artist meet for a battle of Texas Hold ‘Em.
As past and present collapse into one, and as new rounds of strip poker ensue, it is not just clothing that is shed. The performance exposes how the legacy of Saint Alban is tied up in the beheading of a King who was living four centuries ahead of Alban’s time but thirteen centuries into the past for you and me.
Carl Gent is an artist from Bexhill-on-Sea, UK. Their recent work has been attempting to rehistoricise the biography of Cynethryth, eighth-century Queen of Mercia. This has occurred through live publishing, tabletop gaming, performance of folk song, amateur dramatics and the creation of a carnival float that took part in 2018's community-led Bexhill Carnival.