- Venue
- Surface Gallery
- Location
- East Midlands
A severe but well-manicured woman makes a speech in the centre of a corporate space to camera. Her vocals rise and fall with emphasis. She has something important to convey but her rhetoric is nonsensical, washing over the viewer in waves of disjointed abstract imagery. ‘A gymnast practices when there is no one there to see.’ Zen-lite. In front of the woman appears a doppelganger, more informally dressed, who begins to deconstruct the speechmaker’s technique.
We are being instructed on the best technique for public speaking. This is a self-help video, and our guide is conveying insider secrets into how to confidently take centre stage. This scene takes place on a large monitor within a room of projections and television screens.
Nearby another performance is taking place. A gymnast executes a floor dance with precision to a fan-faring soundtrack. Her performance is diminished within the frame to allow for a split screen with a rolling text that provides a commentary on her actions. The voice of the commentator does not address the gymnast’s performance in terms of skill and technique, but from a detached perspective, ‘She pursues momentary objectives that have nothing to do with the content of the actions.’
These two videos are elements of ‘Beyond the Suspension of Disbelief’, a joint exhibition of new work by Alice Gale-Feeny and Katherine Fishman. The two artists have created a collaborative context in a shared space, including examples of their individual practices that interlink, as well as works produced together, which draw upon this common ground.
The exhibition hinges around the notion of takes, with works functioning as fragmented scenes that tread over and build upon the same ground. The conversation feels natural, both Fishman and Gale-Feeny are evidently heavily involved in the dissection of the way things are said, and they are performers with different strengths and viewpoints, which, along with dramaturg Michael Pinchbeck, the artists have made space for within the gallery.
The exhibition was curated in dialogue with Pinchbeck, who is also a performance-maker, artist, writer. The role of the dramaturg is to compose drama, providing a structure for performance. Unable to infer exactly how much input Pinchbeck has had, I assume that he has been an outside eye for the artists, considering where best to place and deploy them.
Gale-Feeny is a more frequent and demanding presence within the space; her eyes seek to make contact with yours from behind the screen. Her expression suggests that the information she is conveying is universally vital and yet also passed to me like a secret on a need-to-know-basis. Each phrase is formed deliberately to say the least and mean the most to the greatest amount of people, ‘Get out of first gear and into top gear.’
Fishman is absent as a physical presence for much of the exhibition; substituting her voice for text or working behind the scenes on collaborative work. Her work seeks to deconstruct and analyse, and this has a natural position at a remove from action. In the work, A More Neutral Front, her physical form is projected on the wall at a comparable size to the viewer. Fishman looms awkwardly. The harshness of the filming process is underlined by the split screen first showing her in full-length with introverted body language, the second isolating her facial features and in particular the darting of her eyes and the forming of syllables in her mouth.
Fishman refers in abstract terms in the passive voice to a message, and picks apart the way in which its tone and awkwardness of phrasing has caused a breakdown in communication. Her body language and occasional scrunch of the face as she gropes for the way to move through her sentences, describe a niggling dissatisfaction. This projected work utilises headphones hung from the ceiling, which hold you bodily at a certain distance, a single audience member at a time. This was an interesting counterpoint to a work by Gale-Feeny, which provided ample seating for an audience.
Things then become more complicated as Fishman and Gale-Feeny begin to work together. Around a corner and low to the ground Gale-Feeny appears in front of a green screen. Her performance, well paced and deliberate, becomes more absurd with a luminescent green halo/backdrop. The position of the work gives it the sense of an outtake or glimpse behind the scenes. Gale-Feeny embodies a role she clearly doesn’t believe in. It is not a vicious attack on the emptiness of self-help but it pulls apart this vacuum, which can be created when platitudes replace insight.
Throughout the exhibition Fishman takes the role of the onlooker, speaking from a place of detachment while Gale-Feeny acts as a mimic, involved with the genre she is attempting to satirise to the point where the ticks and tropes have been absorbed. Gale-Feeny is more the performer, thinking through doing, while Fishman has more editorial tendencies, and it therefore seems natural that the most self-reflexive and self-referential work Figureground and An Image of the Real Thing or the Real Thing, would combine their two talents.
The gallery in this exhibition becomes a theatrical space, the works are set pieces and the progression through the construction of the exhibition is dramatised. The performers are comfortably locked behind the fourth wall, broadcasting on different levels: to the casual observer, to a gathered crowd, to an individual. In all of the works it is the mediation of the performances through documentation, which facilitated a greater intimacy with the language used; intonation, pauses and phrasing were left to hang in the air whether text or verbalised. Pacing and position added to a sense of intrigue and reveal, as the two practices moved together. Their performances could be studied and re-watched by the viewer, their characters solidified, so that they could be followed and discerned as they overlapped. What lies beyond the suspension of disbelief? An appreciation of how the whole is constructed.
