O'Reilly's live performance saw her strip naked before cradling a dead pig for four hours at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance. The performance called 'Inthewrongplaceness' was watched by one person at a time for up to 10 minutes each.

Writing on the gallery website, O'Reilly said: "The work left me with an undercurrent of pigginess, unexpected fantasies of mergence and interspecies metamorphoses began to flicker into my consciousness."

A spokeswoman for People For Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said: "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. Cruelty is not entertainment."

James Green, the director of the gallery, defended the performance saying that it was important for the area as people usually have to travel to London to see such art shows.

O'Reilly, who called the performance "a slow crushing dance with a pig for one person at a time", has courted controversy throughout her career as an artist. Many of her performances feature self-harm and she also paints using her own blood.

Her current productions include 'View' where "artist and audience" exchange intimate emails and phone calls culminating in a meeting and a decision by the audience member to make a cut on her body. Her latest video installation 'Harvest' explores "the opening of the skin".

O'Reilly's 'artistic policy', according to the British Arts Council, "seeks to question rather than provide easy answers. By asking the audience to take a risk, a sense of intimacy is established, creating a direct and immediate dialogue with the audience."