Hold

David Cross’ Hold was a performance project that held the material and physical promise of grand spectacle, but delivered its opposite. The performative action of Hold — that of two people holding one another — was centred within a towering, blue inflatable structure. When the work was presented in 2011 for Performance Space it was installed in the Carriageworks’ largest performance venue — the only space that could contain it. The material economy and aesthetics of Cross’ work invoked communal, playful activity, as only gigantic, inflated vinyl objects can. But this was a play of opposites, of push and pull,