LONDON - Animal rights activists have described as "sick" a live art performance involving a naked woman cradling a dead pig for four hours.

Kira O'Reilly's show, called "Inthewrongplaceness" will be performed at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance, southwest England, later on Friday.

James Green, the gallery's director, defended the show, saying that the audience would be controlled, with one person at a time watching the performance for up to 10 minutes each.

"In terms of the gallery's view, we feel very strongly that we should provide audiences in the region with opportunities to see the kind of works that they have to go to London to experience," he told Reuters

He added that the gallery "had not received a single direct complaint" about the planned show, one of several live performances making up the Tract live art programme.

But a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) called the performance "sick".

"As Miss O'Reilly seems to depend on the shock of using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest she take up a day job instead to pay the bills," she said. "Cruelty is not entertainment."

On the gallery's Web site (www.newlynartgallery.co.uk), O'Reilly calls the performance "a slow crushing dance with a pig for one person at a time."

"The work left me with an undercurrent of pigginess, unexpected fantasies of mergence and interspecies metamorphoses began to flicker into my consciousness."