Don’t Leave Me This Way marks a challenge in Franko B’s performance practice, formalising his recent departure from blood-based work. Here he allows the viewer time to look at his naked body and approach it as a sculptural form; heavily tattooed and scarred, voluptuous in shape and size.

Franko B’s performances have always left metaphorical marks on the psyches of vulnerable spectators, moving empathetic viewers with the visceral charge of the prone body. If the ways in which he can exact this effect through bleeding have been exhausted for the moment, then Don’t Leave Me This Way continues the scene of wounding in the realm of the metaphorical, inscribing his form in painful vision.