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Esther Cox on her work 'Theatreland.'
'I was already familiar with Doris Zinkeisen's 1939 Night at the theatre. Whether you read the image as feminist or a foreshadowing of what was about to come ( the absence of men during WWII- his ghostly figure overhanging the background), it has a dark and slightly surreal quality that appealed to me. The women are formal, watching and being watched. At the theatre to see and be seen.
I wanted to flip this on it's head. A group of women lost in the moment, engrossed in a show, unconscious of any gaze. My version is more informal. The emphasis is on a joyful experience of art shared between them. Not separated in a box, but in the circle or up in the gods, side by side.'
Esther Cox continues 'my starting point was to play with the light and dark that Zinkeisen uses so powerfully in her image, and to reference the rich warm tones she uses, so associated with theatre interiors (including a gesture of the heavy velvet swags) and to treat the imagery with the same painterly textural marks that she employed. I loved the 'limelight' colour used in the original and kept it in my version, updating it with a clash of colourful theatre lighting.
The result, I hope, is as sophisticated as Zinkeisen's, but takes us forward 80 years to give a vibrant contemporary view of diverse women and shared experience.'
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