Photo © Tate (Sam Day)
PRIVATE DANCER addresses the right to refusal of marginalised people within spaces of performance and the aestheticisation of their labour
PRIVATE DANCER is a kinetic installation built from five aluminium concert-theatre lighting rigs fitted with choreographed spotlights. These whirring lights flicker and dance around the room in sync with an unheard soundtrack, Tina Turner’s 1984 album Private Dancer. Piled in a heap on the floor, the rigs evoke the rubble of a run-down building. Together, these elements subvert ideas of spectacle, stardom and visibility. By isolating the visual language of live performance in the gallery, Gale questions the demands of celebrity and the way technologies are used to define and commodify bodies.
Gale’s interest in Tina Turner relates to the singer’s refusal of the racist and sexist conditions under which she was required to perform. The artist has said: ‘Tina is a kind of north star for me, because she retired… She made a decision to stop working, and in effect step away from the rules of engagement for what I think is a very fraught relationship between audiences and performers that many performers don’t survive.’ PRIVATE DANCER choreographs an uncanny meditation on ‘the tyranny of labour’, and of refusal and silence chosen as political positions. What happens to a space of performance in the absence of a body?
Credits
Lighting design by Josephine Wang