The fourth part of performance artist and Sang Bleu contributor Ron Athey’s Incorruptible Flesh lands in London this summer. Messianic Remains is the latest in a series of performances beginning in the mid 1990s created by Athey alongside artist Lawrence Steger, who died of AIDS in 1999. Beginning with Incorruptible Flesh: Dissociated Sparkle, in which visitors were invited to touch a baseball bat-impaled Athey whose face was forced into a grimace with hooks, the series continued through Perpetual Wound, in which the never-healing malady is passed on from collaborator Dominic Johnson to Athey, culminating in Incorruptible Flesh which previewed in London earlier this month. Revisiting the impaled and pierced scenario of its first incarnation, Athey’s ritualistic resurrection extends his “exploration of the continuation of his own post-AIDS body”. Below are images from the series offering a rare glimpse of the grueling endurance sustained by the inimitable and influential artist:

UK performance dates for Athey’s Incorruptible Flesh: Messianic Remains will be announced this month.