George Chakravarthi: Thirteen
Swan Room, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
11 November 2011 – 29 April 2012
Admission free
Thirteen is a newly commissioned photographic installation by award winning London based artist George Chakravarthi. Specifically conceived for the RSC’s Swan Room, the works on show portray thirteen of Shakespeare’s tragic characters all of whom meet their ends through suicide. Created as a series of powerful self-portraits embedded in light boxes, Chakravarthi assumes the roles of some of Shakespeare’s most celebrated yet doomed characters: Brutus, Cassius, Eros, Goneril, Mark Antony, Othello, Timon, Lady Macbeth, Portia, Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Romeo. George Chakravarthi opens in the Swan Room, Royal Shakespeare Theatre on 11 November and admission is free.
Chakravarthi says of the project:
‘The portraits are multilayered and imbued with textures and surfaces, created to present my vision of each image and character, revealing the beauty and anguish found across Shakespeare’s tragedies.
This subject seemed to me a fertile and contemporary territory for exploration, especially in the context of our recent and current political history and the direct connection to Shakespeare’s representation of death as an act of courage, passion and honour. Whilst I don’t advocate unnatural, untimely death of any living being for any purpose, I am interested in the value and expediency one gives to ones own life and beliefs; this, it’s evident, is a recurring theme in Shakespeare’s plots and very relevant to the cultural and political, post 9/11 climate we live in today.’
Swan Room
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Waterside
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, CV37 6BB
Tel: 0844 800 1110
Exhibitions open daily from 9am –10pm, and from 10am-10pm on Sundays
Website: http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions