Oriana Fox: Tableaux Vivants (2009)

’Tableaux Vivants’ (2009) is a constellation of imagery, poses and language taken from the history of performance art. Beginning with an imitation of Vanessa Beecroft’s ’VB16’ (1996), one of the models reaches down and pulls a scroll from her vagina, evoking Carolee Schneemann’s seminal performance ’Interior Scroll’ (1975). This mashing up of old and new references continues throughout the piece as the models speak, gesture and dance for the audience. Carole Luby performs a ’Naked Action lecture’, again in homage to Schneemann and in doing so explains the history that the models are enacting. Her lecture quotes Hermine Freed’s film ’Art Herstory’ (1974): “I can become this woman, but how can I relate my life to hers? How much does my time shape my life? Woman may be born free but she is forever tied to her time, place and circumstance…Was I not fulfilling my own fantasies in reliving these images? Role-playing, time-travel, instant space travel, as well as t