Roman Ondak (b. 1966) is a Slovakian artist who produces work in a range of media including performance, drawing, sculpture and installation. As part of the Tate Exchange programme, we are presenting Ondak’s performance Good Feelings in Good Times. This was the first performance artwork to enter the Tate collection and takes the form of an artificially created queue performed in the gallery by a group of participants. The performed queue convenes and dissolves at agreed times with the participants behaving as naturally as possible.
Good Feelings in Good Times is inspired by Ondak’s memories of long queues outside grocery shops during the Communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia, though the work adopts different meanings when presented in a gallery context. The artist often stages ‘duplicates’ of such everyday social situations, focusing fresh attention on the rituals and behaviours of everyday life.