LAUGHING WHILE 2020 -
Laughing While Boating - created in collaboration with Katherine Parkinson - will be included in Reclaiming The Muse, curated by Ruth Millington for the Oxford Festival of the Arts and exhibited from 28th June - 14th July 2004 at St. John's College.
First exhibited in Funny Ha Ha - which Halls curated for Maddox Gallery, London Dec 2022 - Jan 2023.
Laughing While Boating depicts the actress Katherine Parkinson aboard a swan pedalo on a Butlin's holiday camp boating lake. Her voluminous Jacobean costume billows over the side of the vessel and as its hemline hits the water, its surface is 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 Butlin's slogan ‘Our True Intent is All for Your Delight’, was originally a quote from Shakespeare’s play ‘ A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, references evoking popular entertainments, pleasure palaces, ribaldry and mischievous disorder.