“Every time I perform an action I detect an enormous potential in the audience. It is my aim to use this to its fullest; it is a potential energy that is worth further investigation.

To make this possible I bring something of myself to the table and invite people to do exactly the same so that we become a community in action with no division between artist and audience.

For this project what I bring is the celebration of the achievement of gender equality in suffrage. I also offer my skin and a tattoo machine to people for them to be able to leave a ‘permanent’ mark and raise awareness of the importance of being counted and being heard through voting.

The skin becomes a political surface. The audience, on encountering the artist’s skin, must make a critical decision. The accumulation of ‘X’ marks is an ongoing petition re-visited by a community over an extended period of time.”

-Ivan