Something old - a piece of horse manure
Something new - a nylon wig
Something borrowed - a salmon pink bed roll
Something blue – the artist’s right ear
In Tableaux, Andrea Gardner arranges an eclectic cast of props, including herself, across staged photographs and sculptural follies. Summoning the spirit of the tableau vivant, the artist becomes a shape-shifting formal device, within playfully constructed scenes. Elsewhere, she appears through absence: as phantom feet in empty shoes or a solitary ear quietly taking stock of the drama. Tricks, bricks and visual feints disrupt the logic of things, inviting strange acts of looking, and of being looked at.
The exhibition unfolds as a theatre of subtle dislocation, where colourful absurdities collide with recognisable tropes in provocative juxtapositions. This dynamic is manifest in Olympia (after Manet), where diminutive stockinged legs channel the chutzpah of Manet’s protagonist, albeit without the brazen gaze, and with the wry comedy of a conspicuously visible gusset seam. Faced with such weighty art historical baggage, humour feels less like irreverence than necessity.
Identity is central to the work in Tableaux, but not necessarily in the autobiographic sense. Gardner’s recurring presence serves as a means of testing broader constructions of selfhood. Through playful performance, she reveals identity as a mutable arrangement of scripted conventions and balancing acts, which are both personal and universally shared.
