Monster Chetwynd

A Tax Haven Run By Women is an installation of sculptures and costumes made by Chetwynd that she uses for live performances. These imagine an anarchic game-show style competition between two teams, ‘Women Who Refuse to Grow Old Gracefully’, inspired by the actor and singer Mae West, and ‘The Oppressed Purée’. The teams compete via a dance-off for a ride to a tax haven (a place with very low tax for foreign investors). They travel in the Catbus, a character from Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbour Totoro (1988). Meanwhile, other performers act as a male cult leader, and seals, controlling the soundtrack.

Chetwynd’s performances and costumes are absurd, irreverent and spontaneous. However, her work often stems from research into economics, anthropology and maverick individuals. A Tax Haven Run By Women reflects on the similarity between cults and tax havens. Both tend to exist in remote locations isolated from regular society. Chetwynd says, ‘The performance is weirdly a combination of goofy, dreamlike Mae West women running a tax haven which is this wonderful place where you do actually want to be, and the kind of scary arsehole cult leader gone wrong.’

Chetwynd’s carnivalesque practice builds on traditions of performance from medieval mummer plays to avant-garde happenings. She often works with friends and acquaintances as performers. Chetwynd describes creating her handmade costumes and props quickly, driven by excitement. She says, ‘This is often interpreted as ‘wilful amateurism’, but actually I would explain it as a preservation of the original sense of fun’.