Rita Says’ Separate Spaces brought out goodness from all sorts of introverts at A&D Gallery during this intimate encounter with ‘other’. The show is an illuminating response to gender and transgender issues and to perceived alienation.
Sweeping sketches serve as technical preparation for what is to come. Elegant ideas scrawled on foolscap, swirling around framed photo-collages, show a slice of Rita Says before the unsafe sculptures. Knife-thrower coils of tungsten-tipped saw blades drew blood from the hands that made them, no doubt. Here, Thea Porter’s leggy blonde, dancing in her gaudies, seems oblivious, out of place but Rita Says she lived in Thea Porter’s house and the painting is of a night they shared. Tension and fragile boundaries are universal , of course, and so it is that the sculpture transcends any original motivation, to include us all.
How unsettling is it to sit in Rita Says’ chair, with a sharp knife pointing straight at your head, held away by a single, taut line? Is this intimidation? You have until 19 October to find out.
On Friday 16th October, Rita Says/Pete Jones’ performance will take place (in a closed gallery) viewable from outside 51 Chiltern Street, London W1U 6LY, at 8.30pm.
