Camden Arts Centre,London
A film without motion, an opera without singers, and a story in fragments… Rose English holds all in compelling balanceRose English is the unsung queen of British performance art. I would like to say that she is eminent for her droll and highly eccentric musings in venues as disparate as the Roundhouse,Tate Britain and Richmond ice rink, but this would be an overstatement. For those who like her utter strangeness – going approximately as an angel, and forcing her large frame into a dainty tutu to deliver monologues on femininity,delivering a kind of anti-circus show with a live horse she has always been a star to follow.
But her performances down the decades (she was born in 1950) have been so ephemeral often improvised, always short-lived – that most of us have very little experience of her work first hand. It is therefore a treat to have some sense of what English has made caught by the tail and held still in one position for some months at Camden Arts Centre. Although there are no live performances, and alas,there is at least a strong presentiment of the artist’s thoughts at work.
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Source: theguardian.com