Power Plays

Power Plays presents two new film works, Muster and Fought, by artist Laura Eldret. The films they explore issues of artistic authorship, personal empowerment, choice, obligation and how powers constantly shift. The exhibition courts the seductive power of the spectacle, exploring how individuals create, record and retell their individual and collective identities.

Also presented will be ephemera, documentation and new works related to the two film works. Power Plays continues artist Laura Eldret’s interest in the cultural iterations of individuals and groups that define themselves according to their passionate adherence to particular ways of being.

Fought (2011-12) is a three-part project: a live event in which a boxing match was re-enacted; a documentary film of the re-enactment; and a play based on the documentary film. The restaging of the boxing match was held at a venue in central London and witnessed by a crowd of artists, curators and other spectators, many of whom had never seen a boxing match before. Power Plays will feature the documentary film, which was made in collaboration with BWB boxing and filmmaker Renee Vaughan Sutherland.

Muster (2011) was filmed in Swanage, Dorset and features a cast of colourful local characters. The film is a theatrical staging of alternative identities set against a backdrop of the sea and framed by two classical columns.

Power Plays is supported using public funding by Arts Council England