FACTUAL ACTUAL, 2021-2024
The National Gallery, London // Southwark Park Galleries, London // Fruitmarket, Edinburgh // Towner Gallery, Eastbourne
In December 2021 Florence Peake presented ‘Factual Actual,’ a series of commissioned performances as part of 'Dance to the Music of Our Time,' a live exhibition at The National Gallery. In ‘Factual Actual,’ figurative painting and performance is combined as large, exuberantly painted canvasses are folded, dragged, and suspended by five dancers, moving between flat and sculptural forms and theatrical elements of concealment and revelation.
Factual Actual: Ensemble (2023-24) was a one-year touring installation and performance, which reached an audience of 13,881 through 14 performances and 124 exhibition days, across three venues, Southwark Park Galleries (London), Fruitmarket (Edinburgh) and Towner (Eastbourne). It also reached 116 participants in the artist talks and 96 people took part in direct engagement activity across the venues.
Respected for her queer approach and non-hierarchical process, Peake works with a multitude of diverse collaborators and part of this commission was collectively developed in a series of public workshops at Southwark Park Galleries in November 2022. Re-interpreting and expanding on the performance at the National Gallery in 2021, Factual Actual: Ensemble interrogates what a painting can be, resisting a classical and static tradition, through the movement of the body.
SELECTED PRESS:
The performers are Temitope Ajose-Cutting, Iris Chan, Katye Coe, Rosalie Wahlfrid and Natifah White, and the producer is Nikki Tomlinson. Supported by Richard Saltoun Gallery, Arts Council England, Wainsgate Dances, La Becque Résidence d’artistes, Harlequin Dance Floors and Sigrid and Stephen Kirk.