No Epitaph Needed was an exhibition and live event presented in the derelict chapel of Caroline Gardens in Peckham, South London. The show consisted of a number of large works on paper hung in the altar area of the chapel and a live musical/spoken word event.
Drawing on a number of epitaphs both real and fictional the show used the organizing principles of the chapel’s architecture and ritual function to examine the epitaph as a form of critical observation. The title of the show was lifted from an epitaph on a memorial stone located in the chapel itself and this in turn was used as the starting text in a ‘order of service’ type leaflet produced for the live event. The live event was a collaboration between the writer John Slyce and the band Arthur Brick in which John Slyce joined Arthur Brick for a spoken word performance reading from a collage of epitaph like texts ranging from Ginsberg to Hancock.