Gail Pickering
Zulu (Speaking in Radical Tongues), 2005/08
Performance view
Photo: Sheila Burnett
Courtesy the artist and Tate
enlarge

Gail Pickering
Zulu (Speaking in Radical Tongues), 2005/08
Performance view
Photo: Sheila Burnett
Courtesy the artist and Tate
enlarge

Gail Pickering

Gail Pickering’s sculptural tableaux vivants, films and performances explore and revive social and political events by staging fictional actions in real sites or ephemerally built theatrical sets. Zulu (Speaking in Radical Tongues) (2005/2008) is a sculpture that is activated by an evolving series of performances throughout the exhibition. The three-dimensional letters of ‘Zulu’ resemble a discarded advertising hoarding or props from a film set. During the performances, ‘Zulu’ both as sign and stage, is hijacked by a performer channelling dialogue and physical gestures borrowed from the diaries and manifestos of 1960s/70s urban guerrilla groups, communes and their cinematic counterparts. Presented as a seamless monologue, the script undergoes a process of repetition and restructuring with each performance, interrupted by the performer’s choreographed movements. The scripts and props are displayed as remnants of the performance throughout the exhibition, inviting the audience to reflect on the portrayal of these ideologies and events through historical distance.