TOM HUNTER:A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

When Tom Hunter moved to London from Dorset, his first job was as a tree surgeon in Regents Park. “We were working right by the open air theatre when they were performing ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. We gave them branches for the set and got free tickets in return.” In the 25 years since he left the countryside, Hunter has become, to a significant degree, an urbanite, living and working in the quintessentially inner city borough of Hackney. So it is surely not by chance that he chose one of Shakespeare’s most bucolic works as his point of departure for this exhibition, with the nine images strongly reflecting both Hunter’s rural roots and his adopted city home. “As a country boy,” he says, “I’m always trying to find a bit of the countryside in the city.” This comes out particularly strongly in the playful imagery of the penultimate photograph in the series, where the ‘aristocracy’ of the East End, the pearly kings and queens, are pictured in an urban environment, with horses and hounds.

Mechanical turned Prospero

Hackney has always been central to Hunter’s art. Much of his work seeks “to describe the local myths, covert struggles and secret dreams of its inhabitants which are typical of any community the world over”. He was drawn to The Dream because of its richly layered quality and the complexity of its overlapping worlds and found in the mix of mortal and fairy, noble and peasant, the old and the young, a model for Hackney, with its extraordinary diversity of people. He assembled his cast by going into the community and drawing together an ensemble of different types including samba dancers, young people, a stripper and a local band. “All these people are involved in their own performances. They live in parallel worlds, which rarely overlap. I really love the way Shakespeare has mixed everybody up… As our society gets more complicated, it gets more disconnected. The groups never seem to touch.” In The Dream, he says, “even though everybody is so close, they are constantly losing each other in the forest”.

The photographs are hung in chronological order, but Hunter emphasizes that each one is a discrete work, to be viewed individually as well as within the context of the other images and the famous narrative. Their highly posed quality (involving large casts and careful staging) gives them a stillness and a sense of suspension in time. They are also very theatrical. “I am fascinated by tableaux and it seemed to me that the play has exactly this quality of being lost in the moment – of people being transfixed”. He hopes that his viewers will experience something similar and will stand in front of his photographs, peeling away layer upon layer of meaning and feeling, reference and impression. In 16th and 17th century Europe, the Masque was a popular form of courtly entertainment. It consisted of formal set pieces, with elaborate stage design, costumes and choreography. The Dream has many echoes of this genre and has its own rustic masque, the mechanicals’ performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. Hunter’s poised and posed images, with their sense of ceremony and

the exotic, are strongly reminiscent of this highly mannered art form. The ironic counterpoint between the courtly and the popular played out in Shakespeare’s work, is developed in Hunter’s photographs and given a new relevance to the contemporary world.

This exploration of the relationship between different historical periods is not new to Hunter who is known for his photographic reworking of old master paintings and the process of layering past and present references is an integral part of his approach. He is fascinated by the fact that in Shakespeare’s play the action takes place within a very short time, so that different realities overlap and what is real or not real is no longer clear. “I have always used artificiality as a Brechtian device, in order for the viewer to question photography and ask what is happening in my photographs.” He wants the viewer to realise how “photography is not real but staging.” This quality is reflected in the photographs, many of which are set in a Hackney social club. The closed, interior, somewhat claustrophobic quality of the images seems at first to run counter to Shakespeare’s

most outdoor of plays, but, Hunter says, “people think of forests as open, but it is really a very enclosed space.” Here, we are in a world where every assumption about reality is underscored by another, perhaps contrary version of reality.

There is a certain grim irony in the fact that these pictures were made at the time of this year’s riots which were, Hunter notes, a midsummer madness of an altogether bleaker nature. But his work is not overtly political. It is a celebration of cultural diversity and a vision of unity and community within that diversity. Shakespeare’s comedy is set in a classical Arcadia; Hunter’s work has something of the Utopian about it, a call for reconnection, as well as a celebration of the cultural richness he observes all around him, every day.

by Polly Coles

A Midsummer Night’s DreamFour young lovers and a group of rustic players come to the woods outside Athens on a midsummer’s night and become entangled in a feud between the Fairy King and Queen. The story is full of comic confusion as lovers – both fairy and mortal – are enchanted and fall in love with the wrong people.

And I serve the Fairy Queen

Titania, played by a Samba Queen, is accompanied by one of her fairies and Puck. They are posed as if frozen in time - exotic, self-absorbed and otherworldly. Hunter is interested in “the artificiality of stage photography” and here, the photograph is reminiscent of 19th and early 20th century erotic tableaux-vivants or living pictures. Puck, in contrast to the fairies, is a near genderless presence, almost invisible in black and set in shadow, she/he is remote from both the fairy and human protagonists.

The course of true love

Lysander and Hermia sit glumly in the foreground of this static bar room scene in which youth is depicted as hopelessly blocked by the demands of the older generation. Egeus, Hermia’s father, does not want her to marry Lysander and favours Demetrius who is himself in love with Hermia. Egeus, Hippolyta and Theseus, Duke of Athens, are depicted as East End aristocracy, pearly kings and queen, stiffly presiding at the table. Other characters and motifs are introduced: Helena, who is in love with Demetrius, stands watching him from behind the bar; in the background, Hunter’s female Bottom is seated beneath the antlers that are her emblem throughout the series.

I will roar you gently as any sucking dove

Hunter’s Hackney rude mechanicals are a Motley Crew tribute band. He is intrigued by the theme of transformation in the play and by gender changes throughout Shakespeare’s work (and in the contemporary Elizabethan use of male actors to play female characters) and chose this female tribute band to play a male group. The rough, peasant actors transform into long-haired heavy metal performers who transform into women.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

At a party in a hall, the lovers and fairies are brought together, though they continue to inhabit separate realities. Oberon, a distant and controlling presence, stands in the centre of the stage; Puck laces Lysander’s drink; Titania and Bottom are in the spotlight and Demetrius and Helen look on, distracted, from the far right. Hunter is interested in the aimlessness of current youth culture and its illusory conviction that youth and beauty bring happiness. Here, the four young protagonists are far from joyful: they are seated, unmoving and disconnected from one another.

O how ripe in show, thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!

Demetrius and Lysander are under the influence of Puck’s spell and are both transfixed by Helena. Hunter’s model is a pole dancer and in the eyes of these infatuated young men, she is more fairy than a human girl, brilliantly spotlit, artificial, a glamorous, erotic icon, part film star, part comic strip heroine. Hunter plays with the overlapping realities here and wryly echoes the innocent, arcadian symbol of the Elizabethan maypole in the stripper’s pole.

There sleeps Titania, sometime of the night

Titania, queen of the fairies, lies suspended in sleep and outside linear time, as the contrasting times on the clock faces show. In the background, Puck and Oberon are watchful and controlling presences. Bottom gazes mournfully at the queen and is shadowed by the antlers which suggest the ass’s head of the play. The green cloth of the snooker table is a playful echo of the greenwood and greensward of Shakespeare’s play.

On the first view to say, to swear I love thee

In this first outdoor scene in the series, the night setting is nonetheless claustrophobic with all the lovers, mortal and supernatural, caught in deadlock.Hunter is interested in the way the play dramatizes the overwhelmingly powerful experience of love for the young, when the most passing infatuation can feel like the greatest love. In the background, Lysander and Demetrius tussle over Helena; Hermia has fallen to her knees in a state of confused disorientation and Titania and Bottom, on the steps, snuggle together in ridiculous bliss. Once again Oberon and Puck look on coolly.

Jack shall have Jill: nought shall go ill

In an image that combines both the urban and the rural, day dawns and a version of reality is restored. The young lovers lie sprawled under a tree or sit gloomily, head in hand, as they emerge from their night-long, spell or drug-induced trances. Representative of the old order, the pearly kings and queen survey this aimless scene and seem, paradoxically, more a part of the new dawn than the young people over whom they keep watch.

There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be wedded

Order and propriety are restored as each protagonist is united with his or her true love. The young are safely married; the old smile at each other with satisfaction: their job is done. But if we look harder, we see that this is, perhaps, only a temporary reality. Mingled among the wedding guests, barely recognisable in mortal clothes, are the fairies, looking on, implacably.

Further inFormation

the artistTom Hunter is well known for his photographic reworkings of old-master paintings. He was the first artist to have a photography show at the National Gallery. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally at galleries including the V&A, the Museum of London and the Serpentine Gallery. www.tomhunter.org

exhibition dates4 November – 1 April 2012

talksTom Hunter in conversation6 – 7pm, Thursday 17 November.

Tom Hunter speaks to Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photography at the V&A, about his work.

Think global, act local5.45 - 6.45pm, Thursday 2 February.

Tom Hunter is joined by Shân Maclennan, Creative Director (Participation) at the Southbank Centre, to discuss the place of community in art.

Free but tickets are required. Call 0844 800 1114 to book. www.rsc.org.uk/exhibitions

FilmsAn interview with the artist, and footage from the photographic shoot is available online.

the workPhotographic LightJet prints, mounted on aluminium, 135 x 165cm

CreditsImages ©Tom Hunter Text: Polly Coles

tell us what you thinkWe’d love to know what you think about this exhibition. Please tell one of our Front of House staff or email exhibitions@RSC.org.uk

rSC exhibitionsThe exhibitions programme gives fresh perspectives on Shakespeare and the work of the RSC. We commission some of today’s most interesting artists to create new work for our two dedicated exhibition spaces, the Swan Room and the PACCAR Room, and as interventions around the building.

Stan’S Cafe PreSentS Of all the PeOPle In all the WOrld

Photo: Ed Dimsdale

Coming nEXT

Theatre company, Stan’s Cafe is bringing 989kg of rice to the RSC, a grain for everyone in the country. An array of local and global human statistics will be weighed out in rice and arranged in labelled piles by a team of auditors. The work will evolve and respond to real time events, news and performances as they happen. By presenting statistics in tangible form, Stan’s Cafe, for 2012, will create for us a playful and at times politically charged work of art.

April - July 2012PaCCar room and all around the royal Shakespeare theatre

I have had a dream, past the wit of man, to say, what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was, there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had. But man is but a patch’d fool, if he will offer to say, what methought I had.