LONDON.- In a unique work created for the Serpentine, the internationally acclaimed artist Marina Abramović will perform in the Gallery for the duration of her exhibition: 10am to 6pm, 6 days a week – for a total of 512 hours. Creating the simplest of environments in the Gallery spaces, Abramović’s only materials will be herself, the audience and a selection of common objects that she will use in a constantly changing sequence of events.

On arrival, visitors will leave their baggage behind in order to enter the exhibition: mobile phones, cameras and any other electronic equipment may not accompany them.

Marina Abramović (b. 1946) is a pioneer of performance as an art form, using her own body as subject and object, she has consistently pushed the physical and mental limits of her being. 512 Hours is the first major performance by Abramović since her monumental piece The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2010, in which visitors were invited to sit in silence opposite the artist and gaze into her eyes for an unspecified amount of time. Abramović performed this work every day for three months.

Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Galleries, have said: “Incredibly, this is the first time a public art gallery in the UK has staged a durational performance by Marina Abramović who, since the early 1970s, has done more than anybody to define what performance art is. With a simplicity that harks back to her earliest solo performances, this time there are no rules. There is no formula. Just the artist, the audience and a few, simple props in the empty, white space of the Serpentine Gallery. Marina requests your presence at the Serpentine this Summer. And so do we.”

In the early 1970s, as a young artist in Belgrade, Abramović began exploring the relationship between artist and audience. Since 1978 she has conducted a series of workshops with art students, using a series of simple exercises to increase physical and mental awareness. Over the course of her career, Abramović has continued to develop these workshops, expanding their content and scope. In the future, the Marina Abramović Institute will facilitate these experiences to the general public, within its broader mission of being a platform for immaterial art and long durational work.

Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Abramović remained in Eastern Europe until 1976, when she met the German artist Ulay. The two lived and worked together, travelling and exhibiting throughout Western Europe, the United States, Australia and Asia. In 1989 Abramović returned to her solo career in Amsterdam. Since 2001 she has been based in New York City. Her pioneering works of performance art have made her the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide at institutions including Kunsthalle, Vienna (2012); the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2011); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2005). Abramović’s work was also included in Documenta VI, VII and IX (1977, 1982 and 1992); Venice Biennale 1976 and 1997, with the exhibition of Balkan Baroque earning her the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist.