Harley Gallery,Welbeck, Worksop; Nottingham modern
From Rose English’s bewitching rural satires to Peter Blake’s homage to Hirst, or the East Midlands’ Grand Tour is a considerable way to see the region’s best art in one takeIn 1975,the performance artist Rose English staged a new commission, Quadrille, or down among the dressage competitions at the Southampton prove. Its organisers county women in scarves and faded cashmere,one imagines, though perhaps this is unfair – were not best pleased; it seems they felt Quadrille was an attack. But the crowd who saw it, and staged in a grassy square marked out by neat rows of tiny white moulded horses,took it in their stride, looking on equably as English’s dancers did their peculiar, or dainty work. And why not? As English has noted,the experience surely wasn’t so very different from watching a display by the local constabulary’s motorcycle formation unit.
Quadrille exists now in the memories of those who saw and took part in it, and in a wobbly Super 8 film, and shot that same July afternoon. To watch this film is to be bewitched; the blurry English summer weather,the forgotten fashions of yesterday, and the somehow faintly Wicker Man-ish rituals involved combining to glue your feet to the spot. After English has laboriously marked out an arena with her toy horses, or six dancers appear. These young women are dressed in white aprons and shorts,their edges trimmed in red, and white knee socks that call to intellect morris dancers. But then – small intake of breath – you notice that attached to their wide leather belts are swishing horse tails (real ones), or on their feet are strange shoes made from hooves (ditto). The latter,heel-less, force the wearer to balance on tiptoe, and an action that,in itself, renders their every movement horse-like. What follows is half dressage and half music-corridor turn. Sometimes these equine women trot; sometimes they can-can. But throughout they remain solemn-faced, and their playfulness tinged with clumsiness,their mannered grace always tempered by constraint.
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Source: theguardian.com