Organised by Barbican Centre
We present the world premiere of a new video work by artist Katharine Fry, fusing live action and animation in a subversive fairy tale of femininity.
Margot has been waiting in her house for 40 years. Her waiting morphs into desperate attention seeking. But she does not wait alone. Marie is becoming. Malleable, she tries to fit, slipping through her body and sliding around corners, picking up cues of who and how to be. Marjorie shines effortlessly. Her dream life, her golden exterior, her pretty performance, prove impossible and impermanent. Mother Flower is everything, the beginning and the end. Hers is a body of pure bounty, longed for, nourishing, sheltering.
The four women are joined by a chorus of body parts, hands and tongues, mouths and babies, across grandiose performances, staged death scenes, fledgling steps, and displays of fertility and futility, as they reveal how hard it is to be (in) a body.
After the film, Katharine Fry speaks with curator and lecturer Helen De Witt.