Drama Queens by Elmgreen & Dragset

By Sam Mercer, artist, co - director of Tether and Gallery Assistant



Giacometti's ‘Walking Man’ finds itself onstage with 5 other seminal 20th Century sculptures, including ‘Elegy III’ by Barbara Hepworth & ‘Rabbit’ by Jeff Koons.

Over the next 45 minutes, the sculptures ponder their creation, existence, what they’re doing on stage and who all the strange people are that are staring at them.

Drama Queens is a one act play devised by artists Elmgreen & Dragset for Skulptur Projekte in 2007. In 2012, their work will occupy the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

The play sits alongside other works created in recent years that attempt to anthropomorphise and create a conversation between inanimate, abstract objects and artworks. A similar work, ‘The School for Objects Criticized’ by Alexandre Singh has a variety of everyday objects speaking to each other about an exhibition they have seen recently- an exhibition the audience is currently viewing.

Perhaps this existentialist comedy has similarities to the way Marc Camille Chaimowitz uses Giacometti's Walking Man at Nottingham Contemporary, a way of reconsidering and creating new meanings or dialogues in 20th Century artworks.  

Drama Queens the play can be found in our Study.

Sam Mercer is co-director of Tether, see http://www.tether.org.uk/