YORK creative agency The Beautiful Meme’s new riff of ArtWork events for 2011 in its city-centre offices is expanding its portfolio.

Run in collaboration with Tower Street art gallery According to McGee, ArtWork is throwing its net wider than usual for new performance artists at Tom Sharp’s design HQ in Barleycorn Yard, Walmgate.

Victor Strauss and Rebecca Diamond, the Indivisible duo from Leeds, were first into the spotlight last Thursday, and further one-night performances will follow from Matthew Harper, Charlotte Barnes and Christopher Mollon.

Last year, ArtWork was launched as a series of shows celebrating the work of York St John University’s fine art students.

“The nights really began to fizz and sharpen when the performance element took centre stage,” says Gregg.

“We thought, ‘Let’s do something that is a privilege to helm, not just for us as curators and artists but also for the invitees to attend’.”

Now Tom and Greg says their mission is to “wield the kind of work that burns itself into the memory banks of all who have witnessed it”.

“If the guests can experience something that they’ve never experienced before, something that makes them go ‘wow!’ and continues to hold their imagination well, then that’s a case of mission accomplished,” says Greg.

Tom noted how last year’s events took on a life of their own. “We always had high standards – The Beautiful Meme is, after all, a creative design agency, so to impose challenging priorities on the projects came naturally to me,” says the agency director.

“People often think that calibrating an art exhibition is about being a cheerleader while the artist indulges his or her creative buzz, but we ensure that the buzz is underpinned with rigour.

“And so we find ourselves in a position where the anticipation and the expectations are so high that it makes sense to go further afield, to showcase artists who keenly prioritise the smallest details as much as the bombast of the actual event. Showmanship and ‘shamanship’ are great, but if there’s a forgotten Yellow Pages or that afternoon’s biscuit tray in the frame, then the magic is lost.”

Greg adds: “We have the requisite calibre of artists in our corner, and we can’t wait to unleash them.”

Each show will have a “provocative and interrogative” initial concept.

“Believe me, we’re only too aware of the potential pitfalls of performance art,” says Tom. “All earnestness, bodily fluids and art about art are out of the window. Our second artist, Cumbrian-born Matthew Harper, for example, has a cracking night planned for Friday, May 20.”

Matthew has cerebral palsy, and in a show designed to be entertaining and unsettling, he will place photos of himself alongside icons of beauty such as Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album cover, taking scissors and marker pens to his image to disguise his disability.

“Matt is a witty, irreverent guy. Earnest this is not,” says Tom.

Charlotte Barnes will be making a show of herself on June 17, and the series concludes with Scarborough artist Christopher Mollon on July 22, when he takes an idea – in this case, how lifestyles differ in the urban and the rural – and explores it by using time, his own limits of endurance and three cairns surrounded by ground salt.

Each event runs from 6pm to 8pm for one night only. “These showcases are about as far from po-faced, navel-gazing self-indulgence as art can get. It’s spiky and stylish stuff,” says Tom.

“With such multidimensional gusto, the 2011 Artwork series promises to build on the luminous core established last year, and bring the very best of performance art to the centre of York.”