Rose English Puts Her Best Foot Forward

Focusing on her performances, installations and photographs from the 1970s to the present day, ‘Begin Suddenly in Splendour, Rose English: Performance, Presence, Spectacle’ is the British artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in the German-speaking world. Positioning her queer-feminist work at the intersection of theatre, dance and vaudeville, it makes evident that English’s artistic home has always been the stage, whether performing with large ensembles at London’s Hackney Empire or in the north London squat where she once lived.

Born 1950 in Hereford, English’s early work was influenced by the equestrian culture she came across through her father, who was in the military, and her interactions with the British upper class. In the photograph Rose on Horseback with Tail (1974/2012), for instance, she wears nothing but a black belt to which a real horse’s tail is attached and tied with a pink silk ribbon. Undeniably erotic, the work protests against the conservatism rampant in these circles and questions the idea of the horse as a status symbol within the social elite of her native country.

A year later, English staged her best-known work, Quadrille (1975) – a video in which she further attacks the objectification, fetishization and disciplining of the female body. At the Southampton Horse Show, she had six female performers present a choreography that included synchronized equestrian formations and poses, while wearing horse tails and high heels made from horses’ hooves. By drawing an analogy with the unnatural movements of dressage or ballet, English shows how social structures and hierarchies, such as the construction of gender, are inscribed in bodies.

English continued to turn to unconventional, non-artistic places for the performance Berlin (1976), documented here in an extensive series of photographs. Developed in four parts in collaboration with the filmmaker Sally Potter, the site-specific chapters took place in an ice rink, a swimming pool and the squat in which English and Potter lived, with spoken word performances leading the audience from one location to another in a reimagining of Berlin’s flourishing underground cultural scene during the Weimar Republic. By breaking with classical stage settings and focusing on socio-political impact, the artists delivered a feminist spin on Bertolt Brecht’s concept of epic theatre.

With the passing decades, English’s performances have become increasingly ambitious. Beginning in the late 1980s, she staged a trilogy of full-length shows – Walks on Water (1988), The Double Wedding (1991) and Tantamount Esperance (1994) – in London theatres with a large cast of performers. In the solo My Mathematics (1992), she played the ageing showgirl Rosita Clavel – an alter ego of sorts – on stages in the US, the UK and Australia. On each continent, English co-starred with a different horse, mixing elements of circus, vaudeville, drag and dadaist theatre. At Museum der Moderne, My Mathematics is represented in photographs and videos as well as by a glass case containing pairs of false eyelashes made of bird feathers that audience members were invited to cut off during the performance.

To counteract the fleeting presence of her earlier performances, English later reassembled the costumes, props, photographs and archival materials into independent installations, including Berlin: Remembering the Spectacle (2023). Calling such a transdisciplinary art praxis a ‘spectacle’ today seems to have negative associations, especially when levelled at women. For English, however, this choice of word expresses her desire to entertain her audiences and to constantly oscillate between different live formats.

‘Begin Suddenly in Splendour. Rose English: Performance, Presence, Spectacle’ is on view at Museum der Moderne Salzburg until 2 February 2025

_{Main image: Rose English, Country Life, 1975, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Museum der Moderne Salzburg}