I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be performing at Spill’s series of Think Tank events on 11 May. This will be my first live performance in the flesh in front of actual people since 2019. The pandemic coincided with my midlife crisis, so it’s been a while. Here’s the official blurb:
Artist and talk show host Oriana Fox was once a hot young artist back in the early 2000s. Now fully in the ‘mid-career’ phase, she’s lamenting what might have been and, perhaps unhelpfully, comparing herself with her peers.
Her envy, fuelled of course by social media, has become what some psychologists would deem ‘unhealthy’. However, the aim of her talk show, The O Show, is to explore the overlap between working on the self and working to change the world. Therefore, by interviewing a range of guests from has-beens to national treasures, alongside experts in envy and the life course, the plan is to exploit her midlife malaise.
It’s an opportunity to better understand social comparison; to turn frenemies into genuine friends; to cultivate a little more empathy and gratitude; and to uncover the structural barriers to an artist’s flourishing in today’s art world.
