Anne-Marie Creamer: A Diagram of Waiting

Anne-Marie Creamer’s exhibition A Diagram of Waiting at the Perimeter Space, the Griffin Gallery, takes as its subject the linear progression, and dramatic staging, of the transition of an actor into a fictional character, including the initial stages of the script, diagrams of the gestures and movements of the actor, props and lighting, the actor endlessly rehearsing a single scene, and finally silhouettes and props of the actors and stage.

Creamer has a long-time interest in theatricality, and the complicated ambiguities of presence, disappearance, and representation, which can emerge as the consequence of certain processes. In this, the theatre stage retains a complex position in her work, often proposed as a space of latent becoming; into fiction, into time, into differing identities and imaginary locations, and as such it is a constant reference in A Diagram of Waiting. This exhibition explores some of the paradoxes of an actor’s verisimilitudinous affectation of emotion and how this can be translated into different mediums and formats, using image, shape, colour, outline, text, and lighting as a series of related ‘presence effects’.

The exhibition has been developed from two interconnected elements, two related moments of waiting. One, a drawing, the qualities, and tension of which obliquely inform much of the exhibition, of a fragmented body waiting to be seen on a theatre stage. The second takes a scenario of an actor as they try to inhabit a fictional character. This is based on a series of stills taken from a moment of a rehearsal with an actress and lighting technician at Teatro Valle in Rome in 2012, elements of which featured in Anne-Marie's film,'Treatment for Six Characters'. Moments from this rehearsal have been refracted throughout the exhibition; turned into the basis for a short play, a diagram of notations of the gestures and movements of the actor during rehearsal, stills from rehearsal itself, and finally a series of cut out silhouetted figures taken from ‘Treatment...’ now turned into a reversed tableau made of silhouetted figures, set against geometric spotlit painted shapes and shown from the perspective of looking in from the wings of the theatre. A backstage viewing; A Diagram for Waiting.
Karen David, Griffin Gallery. 2017.

The small publication for this exhibition was titled 'A Diagram of Waiting', published in September 2017 by the Griffin Gallery, illustrated with a text by Karen David.
ISBN: 978-1-9997671-3-6.

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