Ménage (19 page)

ON TWO SCREENS
two figures in women’s clothing strike poses. Faces are never seen. It is possible, however, to infer from their appearance, and from the amateur nature of their attempts, that they are, in fact, men ‘in drag’. Throughout, a female voice from behind camera makes commands: ‘Lift your leg higher’, ‘Stand on one foot’, ‘Show me your stockings’. She also compliments the two figures on their performance. ‘What a pretty girl’, etc.

The audio is out of sync with the actions on both screens, so at times the commands and praise do not co-incide with the events on-screen. This creates a sense of estrangement.
^fn1
A gap between sound and image. Command and reaction. Action and repercussion.

The work is largely seen as being comical, as the two male figures stumble around in high heels and strike poses, in competition with each other, for the attention and praise of the unseen female ‘director’. Feminists have seen this work as a radical reversal of the ‘male gaze,
^fn2
claiming that the process for the artist was one of ‘deconditioning’ the uncultured femininity she had experienced as a girl, and strategically (and with a sense of vengeance) reversing it back onto the bodies of men. As usual, more mainstream critics have claimed that the work is not in any way serious and has nothing to say at all about any of these issues: ‘It’s just a couple of TVs on the TV.’
^fn3

It is worth noting the recurrence of the number 3 in Shears’s work. The artworks are always about threes – a third element always enters which breaks down the dualism of object and subject. The third interacts with both – for example, the presence of the director in a film with two
actors
. Or: image, sound, installation; director, performer, viewer. The three elements are often in conflict with each other. The audio may contradict the picture, creating a third experience for the viewer.

In
Leg Show
there are three people: the two performers (victims, actors) and the woman behind the camera (Shears). There are two screens and one source of audio. The viewer places himself between three pieces of stimulus. Some have found this disorientating. Certainly, those that seek a clear single message from a work by Shears will be confounded. The way to read her work, P. Jennings claims, is to throw oneself into ‘the confusion of the triad’.
^fn4
The actors, and indeed the viewers, are complicit in the work, there can be no objective overview. Even in describing this artwork now, this text cannot exist in one form. It is reportage, theory and image. The three overlap but each form is inadequate in itself, while at the same time depending on the two others. Shears’s work for certain deconstructionists has a political dimension, not in its manifest content but in the form of its reading and interpretation – ‘The works suffer from the same problems that beset democracy’, ‘We must move beyond the single goal and the opposition with the enemy towards the polyphony of the third voice. In it lies confusion but also a way out of the impasse of the old entrenched dualistic oppositions.’
^fn5

Certainly, many comments by Shears would seem to imply a fascination with threes. ‘Three’s company, two’s a crowd.’ She has said many times in interview that she feels she is not one artist, or even two, but three artists all struggling for dominance. Whereas some have seen this as just another attention-grabbing line, others such as Jennings claim that this ‘not one but three’ forms the basis for a critique of the role of the artist that runs through Shears’s work. From this perspective, we can read a cleverly aimed set of challenges to the male-dominated cultural hegemony of one and (cultural) other.

The bisexual role play and suspension of identity in this work has proven offensive to both straight and gay sensibilities, suspending, as it does, any notions of fixity or resolution over the idea of sexuality. A position that problematises the so-called radical stance of so many brands of ‘identity politics’. What has been so problematic to such viewers is that Shears does not ‘come out’, and declare a fixed identity (hence political position), that the work is really just a game, thus suggesting that gender questioning is a phase to be moved through, as traditional reactionary psychological models suggest.
^fn6

Shears’s refusal to take a position has from some quarters led critics to applaud her courage in ‘not succumbing to dated and restrictive models of bracketed behaviour’. As such it is a work well ahead of its time, and as D. Malles has proclaimed: ‘[
Leg Show
] is one of the seminal works of the culture of Postmodern Perverse Pluralism.’
^fn7

HE WAS STARTING
to redefine his idea of perfection. He was coming to learn that the huge emotional ups and downs of every single day, in the three weeks since Dot and Molly had moved in, were themselves a kind of reckless excellence.

Each day started with hysterical noise at six thirty as Molly bounced on the bed and dragged her mother from sleep. He would beg for an hour more, which would only last ten minutes as Molly would invariably play hide-and-seek under his bed with Dot laughing.

‘Get dressed, scallywag!’

‘No-no-no!’

‘I’m going to catch you, I’m going to tickle you. I’m going to eat you all up!’

Then there would be the dressing gown and the tiptoeing through the obstacle course of yesterday’s scattered play-things: Lego that could jab in the heel; Playdoh already squashed into the carpet; a Hello Kitty toy; a digger: a CD; Doctor Seuss; a sock; a dinosaur, each object backlit by the early-morning light, appearing as if it had always been meant to be there.

Breakfast with the child was always an excruciating exercise in coercion and diplomacy. Molly’s worst habit was to refuse to either eat or get dressed. Then she would flip to the opposite – and start spooning cornflakes into her mouth as soon as Dot tried to put her jumper on, thus spilling milk all over her clothes. Her other one was that she wanted to do paintings while eating, leading to predictable but nonetheless regularly repeated disasters with paint and breakfast cereal.

Once some semblance of sanity had been achieved, he and Dot walked Molly the ten vigorous blocks to Upper Street to the new day-care place he’d helped her find. It was
expensive
and the space was only temporary but Dot considered money no object and was thrilled for Molly to be in day care that was a lot like Montessori.

Then after their goodbyes and Molly’s screaming clinging fits, tugging at her mother’s legs, when finally the devil-child was prised away by the hippy-looking carer, Owen would take Dot’s hand and walk her past the yuppie boutiques to Angel tube station. The walks were filled with Dot’s art ideas and plans, and he was always silent, simply staring at her in wonder. The goodbye kiss and then the walk back home, already exhausted.

At his desk, he had to lay out a plan. Having committed to her essay, he now had to clear it with the
Guardian
and
Independent
,
Artforum
and
Frieze
, that he was taking a bit of time out. Each assumed he was angling for a salary because of the recession, and he had to reassure them that that was not the case. In daily emails he had to reaffirm that he would be coming back.

Work on the essay was slow and the flat seemed emptier than ever when he rose from his PC to eat his lunch alone. The pacing would start and he longed again for their many distractions, the games and shouts. It was like a very first love affair, both too hot and cold, all intense.

Come five o’clock, it was the hardest time. As part of the deal, Owen had committed to picking Molly up each day. Invariably, the child refused to acknowledge who he was and screamed. It was only with coaxing and promises of secret sweeties that she left the arms of her carer at all. She always wanted to go to the park. The swings.

‘Again’ ‘Again’ ‘Higher’ ‘Higher’. On the roundabout. ‘Again’ ‘Again’. On the slide. ‘Again, again’.

After an hour and a half of these exertions, he would, under his breath, be cursing her and all children since time began, counting the minutes, streets walked, and bribery sweets given, till Dot came to save him. Fantasising about
her
, standing behind him, massaging his shoulders, asking: ‘How was your day, O?’

By the end of each day, after dinner and Molly’s bath and the grown-ups’ rota of sleepy-time story reading, he would find himself in the corridor staring at the child’s paintings that covered the living-room walls, from waist height to above the head, above the TV, the doors even. Twenty at least. The one on the kitchen door that had little cartoon versions of themselves, all on skateboards on a big wiggly line, the names Molly had asked Dot to write out for her so she could copy. The Mummy that was Dot and a big smile that went over the edges of her face, the boobs, two big circles; then Molly herself, the M upside down – Wolly – bigger than the grown-ups, with immense flamboyant trousers that were a garden in bloom, thirty carefully drawn flowers. Then himself, little more than a long black line, with Xs all around him, even over his name, making it look like Oxen.

My God, he would tell himself then: is that not the best fucking artwork in the world? Is this not the most fucked-up perfect happiness a man could have? He made a mental note to try to accept this precarious crazy happiness.

Morning again and he could hear Molly running behind him to her mumma, He walked into the kitchen and laid out the bowls for breakfast. Estate agents’ brochures were scattered across every surface.

Linton presents: A warehouse apartment, situated within a secure gated development in a former church off fashionable Brick Lane. Property has a large split-level space in living room which has flexible use . . .

There were former school conversions, former hospital conversions, as if the one thing Dot feared was actually living in a typical house.

‘Fuck conversions,’ Dot said. ‘I want to get in before the developers.’

Owen smiled to himself. Dot dreamed of a huge, empty, accidentally discovered space unsullied by the forces of capital that she could convert by herself, but that she had not time to build and refit. In the last few weeks it had become a kind of game with them. He’d encouraged her wildest fantasies of a place in the East End that could unify the three disparate strands in her life and be artist’s studio, crèche and home. There was the former sugar factory off Bank, and the warehouse off Tower Hill. In between working on the essay, he, Dot and Molly trailed round the impossible places, with the estate agents in tow.

It had been last Friday and an old church by Aldgate East, advertising a real seventeenth-century stained-glass window as a feature.

‘Fuck,’ Dot said as they were led in by the estate agent.

The apartment had a section of the rose window. Four apartments probably had a bit of it each. The stained-glass section was brutally cut off by thin partition walls and rave dance music was coming from the neighbouring yuppie. There was a mezzanine to make the place look bigger. Owen stood there as Dot made her assessment.

‘It’s just so . . . Haven’t you got any more churches?’ she asked the estate agent guy. Molly ran around the place shouting, trying to get her voice to echo.

‘Echo, echo, there’s no echo, Mumma!’

‘What do you think?’ Dot asked him.

‘Echo, echo!’ he shouted ‘No there’s no echo, maybe it’s the laminate flooring.’

‘You said there’d be an echo. Mumma!’

The kid was in a huff.

‘It’s not very you. You’ve still got time to find somewhere better.’

The end of another exhausting day had come. Molly was asleep and Dot and he were drinking wine. For some reason
he
was staring at her feet. Large for a woman, heavily veined. Veins. How many times had he avoided staring at her wrists, the scars cut vertical, upward, not across.

‘What?’ she asked and his silent smile made her laugh. She was playing with her wine glass, yawning, and suddenly he was struck by the redemptive beauty of it all. Oh, to kiss those wrists. The long elfin fingers, corrupted by the fingernails bitten to stumps. If only she could stop biting her nails, fighting herself. If only they could talk of that night she had slashed her wrists.

She was massaging her feet then, talking about getting some new shoes, maybe with flatter heels. ‘Sensible shoes,’ she said and laughed.

He had to stop this. His new silence. She was on a big one, trying to work out how to fit in childcare with international travel. Should she take Molly with her to Zurich? It couldn’t be good for a child to be always moving from country to country, there had to be one constant, one nanny at least, but they were so unreliable.

She sighed and threw back her head and ran her fingers through her hair, her eyes closed as she massaged that long neck. Look at her hair, the tiny single strands of grey that she pulls out religiously each day from her dyed Warhol white. They were both restless their unresolved tensions finding form in kisses, in clothes shed. They’d just started to make love on the sofa when Dot suddenly broke away.

‘It’s OK, Molly’s fast asleep.’

‘No, no, not that it’s just . . .’

‘You’re right, it’s not right, we should go to bed.’

‘No, not that . . .’

‘What then?’

Dot admitted she was distracted, couldn’t find the words. His eyes wandered the room, as he tried to find ways to calm her. To finish the sentence that was eluding her. There in the corner by the art books the little light on the
phone
was flashing. The ringer was off. He hoped she hadn’t seen what he’d been staring at. He covered her naked thighs with his shirt, shhing her and whispering. ‘Come to bed, what’s wrong?’

‘It’s just . . .’ she kept saying, ‘just that . . . I dunno.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know why I’m thinking about him now.’

Saul.

‘Shh, come to bed, OK? It’s been a stressful day, just come to bed.’

And so he led her from the sofa, past the bookshelves and the flashing light of the phone unanswered and unanswerable that could keep on ringing on mute all night, for days, years, for all he cared.

The way she lay then, after they were spent, on her back, staring into space. He found himself, as long before, wondering if there was a place for him in that vacancy of hers, if she knew how much her beauty caused him pain. That turn away of the head, the tight neck muscles, her eyes searching beyond him to the cornicing that made him jealous of the empty space that was more absorbing for her than he was. Then for her to turn with the smile, almost apologetic for the dreaming drifting time. And that hand of hers reaching, that told him she’d been somewhere very alone and was so glad to be back and see him there, a hand’s reach away. She would squeeze his fingers then, but still he worried that the pull of that other place was a sign of the return of her madness or some sad lament for the freedom it had once given her. Her smile on returning was always almost apologetic. It made him cling closer, and stroke her hand, telling her ‘I know’. As if he ever could.

She rolled over and placed her hand on his chest. He kissed her fingertips, felt her lungs expand and contract against his chest. In out, in out. As her toes curled round his, he told himself this was real, so real. Oh, to not have
to
face the tomorrow of work and her tapes and the writing of the essay. To just live in this moment now, and make every day this duplicate image – like the way that Molly knew when she shouted in the park, on the swings, on the roundabout. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again.

‘It’s not God or the cops that are standing in the way of your happiness,’ Saul had once had said. ‘It’s only you, you’ve got to kill the cop within, the God, the voices that judge your every action. Happiness requires blood.’

And maybe Saul was right. But to be happy Owen had to learn how to kill the voice of Saul too.

Dot was out at her studio and Molly at day care and he sat himself down to deal with the one thing that could not be postponed – her archive of original master tapes. He had so far looked only at the press tapes.

Something was bothering him. The deadline was in a month and he’d gone back to the start, rewriting everything about her first works. Fretting over telling the world that the person who’d filmed
Negative Leap
had been himself. How the face in
Trust
was his own. If he deleted himself from their history it was tantamount to a lie. The other thought, worse, was that the bigger omission had been Saul. The more he scrutinised the footage the more he saw Saul behind every frame.

‘What you need is a leap into the dark, my dear.’ And so
Negative Leap
was born. ‘You want to be a man? Let me tell you a little secret, it is all a game. All of us men are just play-acting,’ and that was
PlayBoy
. And
Trust
. Think of trust.

Dot had been right to remove the ninth work from the show. The one with Molly – it played into the hands of those who were queuing up to shoot her down, who would use that one flawed work to pronounce all of her work as just sentimental personal recordings elevated well above their status. He couldn’t tell her this, but really, she had to
make
a new work, if she was to retain any credibility as a working artist. This worried him.

Tonight was the first big test of their relationship. It was to be the first time they had been seen in public together. An opening of a group show in White Cube, Hoxton. She couldn’t face another opening, she said, oblivious to how much it meant to him.

‘If we could run off . . . a little cottage, just you and Mozzer, or retire . . . a croft in Scotland, with some cows . . . we could go self-sufficient, or join a commune, or . . .’

While they waited for the agency babysitter, he tried to reassure her. He would be there with her, at a safe distance, watching over her. He made her laugh as she got dressed.

‘Just think of all the people who’ve never been nominated for the Turner Prize, there must be more than a few . . . well, more than a few million. OK?’

On the way in the taxi, her hand in his, Owen re assured her. Of course, it would be wrong for a critic to be seen dating an artist – a little scandal and the media loved its incestuous intrigues.

‘Maybe I should just lurk in the shadows and let you schmooze.’

‘No, don’t leave me alone. Don’t you dare! I want to show you off to everyone.’

She kissed his cheek.

The taxi stopped and he saw the hundred outside the gallery door. He let her go first then counted to thirty and followed. Her face was much kissed then whisked away while they kept him at the front door asking if he was on the guest list. He gave his name, quietly, but the girl was too young to have known who he was. He waited as she got someone more superior, and this superior was then so apologetic and of course he was a welcome guest and why didn’t he come to openings more often and was he alone? Because he could’ve brought a friend?