THE WAIT.
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday April 23rd-24th 2012
Tel: 07914539791
VLADIMIR: We can
still part, if you think it would be better.
ESTRAGON: It’s not worth while now.
Silence.
VLADIMIR: No, it’s not worth while now.
Silence.
ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go?
VLADIMIR: Yes, let’s go.
They
do not move.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
This exhibition bridges the gulf
between the theatre and the arts, collaborating performance with sculpture to
present an audience with a play interweaved with an artistic set design in the
true sense of the phrase; the stage is composed of several artworks that, upon
closer inspection mirror the concurrent themes within the play itself. The play
presented is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot, a tragicomedy in two acts that is performed in a continuous loop on
the stage.
The audience is automatically made
aware of the intentions of the exhibition on entering the space; we are
confronted with the huge, ever-ascending digital numbers of Santiago
Sierra's Death Counter (2009)
that has been placed upon the back wall of the stage. The installation
piece marks the exact number of deaths worldwide each second. It is an imposing
juxtaposition upon the almost-bare stage giving us the continuous reminder of
the increasing proximity of our own fatal outcome. Beneath this lies the
solitary work of Anya Gallaccio’s Because I Could Not Stop (2002),
marking the centre of the stage, evoking notions of the passing of time as
central metaphor to the performance acted around the sculpture, symbolized with
the gradual natural decay of the real fruit that adorns the bronze frame.
The Wait. combines contemporary installation and sculpture with a production of
one of the most influential post-war plays of the 20th century
foregrounding melancholic themes of futility and a desperation to find meaning
in life that a present-day audience can relate to.
“I wanted to present
a contemporary audience with notions of the human search for meaning and the
inevitable realization that all we can do is hope. Where better to exhibit this
than upon a stage?” says Marianne Edwards, curator of the exhibition.
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“The stage functions as landscape
for the artistic wasteland; it foregrounds the awareness that the erratic
characters that act upon it are not real, they are merely metaphors for the
human condition that demonstrate a universal suffering.
Humanity is stripped to its core, revealing
the gravity of the deepest and darkest human emotions and needs, leaving you to
face the inevitable truth – there is no escape, only perseverance. The only act
is that of holding on.”
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