Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Proud Mary, 2007, 2012, 2017, 2022, ongoing every five years. HD four channel video with sound 5:36 min. Courtesy: the artist and Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Sydney.

Proud Mary is a 4-channel video projection that documents Daniel Mudie Cunningham’s performances of this iconic song. Chosen as his funeral song, Cunningham has vowed to perform a lip-syncing rendition of the song every five years until his death.

Since the original performance in 2007, the routine has been enacted three times – in an abandoned car park in 2012 and then in 2017 in an empty Tasmanian swimming pool. The most recent performance, in a Port Kembla field of concrete tetrahedrons in 2022, will have its first Sydney showing at MAG&M.

In his 2007 artwork, Funeral Songs, the artist asked his friends to name the songs they would each like to have played at their funerals. The selected songs ran the gamut from playful to sombre, together representing an archive of how people wish to be remembered at their last hurrah. Daniel’s choice, Tina Turner’s rendition of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song Proud Mary, is a nod to the impact Turner’s 1991 and 1993 performances in Sydney had on the artist.

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