CONCRETE ACTION I, Performance by Martin Tomlinson | 24 Sep 2026
As part of the programme accompanying From the Land, Martin Tomlinson presented CONCRETE / ACTION I, examining concrete’s environmental impact and the destructive processes behind its production.
About
As part of the programme accompanying the exhibition From the Land, artist and choreographer Martin Tomlinson shared CONCRETE / ACTION I, a new performative enquiry into concrete’s role in modern development. The work foregrounded the destructive extraction of limestone gravel, positioning concrete as one of the most aggressively manufactured materials on earth.
The performance interrogated how concrete simultaneously enabled essential human infrastructure while choking natural habitats, polluting water supplies and eroding biodiversity — harms that had become increasingly invisible to those desensitised by urban living. Philosophically, it asked what subconscious destructive impulses drove this global homogeneity, and what genuine alternative structures artists could propose in response.
Artist Biography
Martin Tomlinson
Martin Tomlinson is a London-based artist whose work operates at the nexus of visual art, choreography and sound. His practice crystallised with the cult phenomenon SELFISH CUNT, a provocative, politically charged project that earned him international critical acclaim, with work tracing a path from Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown to Istanbul’s Biennial. In recent years, Tomlinson had methodically repositioned his practice within the contemporary art canon, composing original arrangements for rigorous live performative investigations.