Ongoing collaborative project “The Reluctant Performer” with artists Alice Walton and Anna Lucas.

Reluctant Performer is an ongoing collaboration between Anna Lucas, Adam Gillam and Alice Walton. Playing with the idea of being reluctant performers, appearing (and disappearing) in their making, the collaboration gathers material generated through a convoluted, uncertain and experimental processes of conceiving an image.

Usually this sees the moment of capture being captured itself, with all the messiness and mystery of process, practice, failure and reenactment as vital as any perceived ‘outcome’. This resulting material – film, object and photographic image – embodies the incidental and the absurd to peel back the mechanism of making into a sort of ‘thick description’.

Recent outings for Reluctant Performer include the Doing Together, a research symposium at Bath Spa University in March 2026 and Brighton Photo Fringe 2026 with an online exhibition “Dodger”.

Working images from The Reluctant Performer, 2023-2024.