LONDON – Animal rights activists have described as “sick” a live art performance involving a naked woman cradling a dead pig for four hours.

Kira O’Reilly’s show, called “Inthewrongplaceness” will be performed at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance, southwest England, later on Friday.

James Green, the gallery’s director, defended the show, saying that the audience would be controlled, with one person at a time watching the performance for up to 10 minutes each.

“In terms of the gallery’s view, we feel very strongly that we should provide audiences in the region with opportunities to see the kind of works that they have to go to London to experience,” he told Reuters

He added that the gallery “had not received a single direct complaint” about the planned show, one of several live performances making up the Tract live art program.

But a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) called the performance “sick”.

“As Miss O’Reilly seems to depend on the shock of using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest she take up a day job instead to pay the bills,” she said. “Cruelty is not entertainment.”

On the gallery’s Web site (www.newlynartgallery.co.uk), O’Reilly calls the performance “a slow crushing dance with a pig for one person at a time”.

“The work left me with an undercurrent of pigginess, unexpected fantasies of mergence and interspecies metamorphoses began to flicker into my consciousness.”

From The Daily Mail: After pickled sheep, unmade beds and painting with elephant dung, some questioned where modern art could go next.

Kira O’Reilly will provide her own answer today by spending four hours naked, hugging a dead pig – at the taxpayer’s expense.

The controversial Irish performance artist will invite one person at a time to watch her sit in a specially-constructed set and perform a ‘crushing slow dance’ with the carcass in her arms.

She claims the bizarre exhibition is an attempt to ‘identify’ with the pig, which she cuts with a knife during the show.

Visitors to the Newlyn Art Gallery in Newlyn, Cornwall – funded by taxpayers and the lottery – will be allowed to watch her for ten minutes. The gallery has defended its decision to stage the one-off show, but animal rights campaigners have labelled the performance ‘sick’.

Anita Singh, spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said: ‘This seems to be a desperate cry for help that merits visits from mental health counsellors, not voyeurs.

‘As Miss O’Reilly seems to depend on the shock value of using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest she take up a day job instead to pay the bills. This is not entertainment – this is sick.’

Under the title ‘Inthewrongplaceness’, the piece is billed as a ‘slow crushing dance with a pig for one at a time’.

The performance will see the artist sit in a disused social club designed to look like a bedroom, surrounded by props including flowers and a plastic swan.

She will spend four hours with the dead pig – bought from a local abattoir – in her arms.

She wrote on the gallery’s website: ‘When I cut pig I have an urge to delve both hands into the belly, to meld into her warm flesh, my blood and her blood.’

Miss O’Reilly’s fee for the performance is thought to have been drawn from £30,000 given to the gallery by the Arts Council England.

Gallery director James Green defended the show as a ‘very personal piece of work’. He said: ‘This is a challenging piece of work and exactly the kind of show we should be delivering.

Miss O’Reilly said yesterday: ‘I am well aware of the controversy this performance will create.’