Stage Fright

“Theatre, of course, is rubbish. It happens in the evenings, when there are more exciting things to do, and it does go on a bit. It typically involves people dressing up and pretending to be other people, putting on accents and shouting too much. Since visual art practice has so decisively repudiated, problematised, complicated the whole business of pretending, it’s hardly surprising that the theatre, still apparently a way of representing away in complete naïvety, should be given a wide berth, involving, not infrequently, disdainful glances.”  Nicholas Ridout on Art & Theatre

“Art degenerates as it approaches the condition of theatre” Michael Fried – Art and Objecthood

This Spring, CCA and experimental theatre group Suspect Culture present new collaboration, Stage Fright, an exhibition exploring the nature of theatricality. 

The artists in the show, from theatre and visual arts backgrounds, are Nick Powell and Jonny Dawe (working collaboratively as OSKAR), David Greig, Luke Collins, Dan Rebellato, Patrick Macklin, Graham Eatough, and Sharon Smith and Felicity Croydon (working collaboratively as Max Factory).

In the exhibition, the artists come together to explore the meaning of theatricality in their different fields. Within the visual arts the term ‘theatrical’ has often been used to denigrate an artwork – it somehow seems to lack ‘authenticity’. In the theatre world, ‘theatricality’ is viewed as a more positive agent – it creates a mental space where the imagination is freed and anything is possible. More recently there has been a noticeable trend to rethink the idea of the theatrical in the visual arts. Perhaps marking a shift away from the strict conceptualism of the past, many artists have embraced the potential of theatre, acting and set design.

In Stage Fright each artist has produced work that tests the idea of theatricality within the framework of a gallery, where emphasis is often placed as much on the power of the object as on the ideas at play in an exhibition. Among the many works, Nick Powell and Jonny Dawe test the perceptual shifts created by a mechanised series of stage backdrops. David Greig makes visible the slow tangential process of writing, drawing it out in real time with all its pauses, empty moments, erasures and final drafts. Luke Collins, meanwhile, records the rehearsal process for a work in the making.

A programme of events will accompany the exhibition, for details please check back here.