LAUGHING WHILE 2020 -
Laughing While Boating depicts the actress Katherine Parkinson aboard a swan pedalo on a Butlin's holiday camp boating lake. The voluminous Jacobean costume she's wearing billows over the side of the vessel and its hemline hits the water, its surface suggestively punctured with air bubbles. She appears to have abandoned some distant stage before climbing aboard an elaborate craft floating adrift from a river pageant.
The Butlins slogan ‘Our True Intent is All for Your Delight’, was originally a quote from Shakespeare’s play ‘ A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, a reference evoking popular entertainments, pleasure palaces, ribaldry and drama.
Laughing While Boating was exhibited in
FUNNY HA HA - which Halls curated for Maddox Gallery, London Dec 2022 - Jan 2023.
RECLAIMING THE MUSE, curated by Ruth Millington for the Oxford Festival of the Arts, 28th June - 14th July 2024 at St. John's College.