Henry VIII's Wives is a collaborative group founded in 1997 based in Scotland and Scandinavia. Its members--Rachel Dagnall, Bob Grieve, Sirko Knuepfer, Simon Polli, Per Sander and Lucy Skaer--met while students in the Environmental Art Department of the Glasgow School of Art. The group was named shortly after the death of Princess Diana in September 1997. The name bears a relation to this event but was also chosen because it refuses to label the activities or members of the group (i.e., the date, sex, context and chronology), as it is in almost every way inappropriate. We have been involved in numerous collaborative performative works and installations including Mercedes CL600 (1998) in which we replicated the damage inflicted on Princess Diana's car; Nine Reasons to be an Optimist (1999), a photograph of 10 religious leaders who were invited by the group to meet in a disused airport control tower; and A Pictorial History of the 20th Century (1999) in which elderly day care center inhabitants were posed in re creations of iconic media photographs such as the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald and the aftermath of a napalm attack. The group gathers several weeks before each show to create site-specific works from materials appropriate to each concept. We work with materials that are close at hand or stand out in a particular context. Just after Christmas in Norway, marzipan was on sale so we devised a work using this material, combining film footage of the marzipan with a soundtrack of the cheapest country records we could find. At other times the idea dictates the materials, as in Mercedes CL600 where using a car was essential for representing the actual damage. As a group we are constantly involved in discussion while we work. Sometimes a piece changes dramatically and mutates into something that we cannot recognize as our own. This allows a certain distance between us and the work. We can look at it in a way that is almost objective. The size and geography of the group makes it difficult for all members to be involved in the actual making of the work (at least simultaneously). Thus the work goes through different transformations an d is presented numerous times to the group as a whole. We share the responsibility for what is produced and the aesthetics of each work are a compromise. The playfulness acts to successfully transmit social and political commentary. Henry VIII's Wives as a group is a historical impossibility. In some ways the members come from similar backgrounds and in other ways we don't. We are friends, a temping agency, a family, a package holiday, an audience. We have one child and three languages. As a group we can behave as a microsociety; we can surround something and almost isolate it, acting as a buffer between it and reality. We opened a bank account in the name of the group. Who did we want to be the signatories?, the bank clerk asked. Catherine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, Anne Boleyn. We intervene in situations, which leads to the production of our work. We joke, fail and avoid responsibility. We argue, debate and face ethical decisions. Most of all we work and produce something other than ourselves which we then become. Responsibility is diminished by working in a group and a space is generated to allow actions to be both real and metaphorical. We occupy the gallery in which we work, cook, eat, play and sometimes even sleep. We look in the cupboards, film the sewers and get to know the staff. We visit the city's museums, see the sights and behave like tourists. …
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Nov 1, 2005
Miguel A Astiz + 1
Open Access