London’s sorry excusefor a summer has finally sputtered pathetically out. But you can still find a little slice of sunshine in Tacita Dean’s show in Frith Street Gallery, Golden Square. You can tell she’s English, because this series of gentle cloud drawings was made when she went to LA and was left speechless by the big, expansive and – somehow – blue skies of Southern California. They’re meticulous, slaved-over drawings, accompanied by grey and white versions on Victorian slate. All the images are nice, but that’s about where it stops. So what? Big whoop. Who cares? They’re drawings of clouds.
Downstairs, Dean has filmed David Hockney smoking. More puffs of cloud. It’s a portrait of a habit and an idol, but it’s a whole heap of who gives a shit, just like the drawings.
But then there’s the film. ‘Event for a Stage’ chronicles four nights of a live performance created for the Sydney Biennale. It was Dean’s first attempt at ‘theatre’, and has been edited together to take you on a twisting emotional ride that’s genuinely one of the most compelling bits of art you’ll see all year. The piece itself is a one-man play starring the actor Stephen Dillane. He storms around the stage, dressed in different wigs, covered in arcane make-up. He veers wildly between overwrought soliloquies, quiet moments of what seem like actual personal reflections on the death of his father, and ripping bits of script out of Dean’s hand to read out with scorn and dismay, basically obliterating the fourth wall.
Throughout the 50-minute film, Dean cuts between different performances from each of the four nights. You never know which night you’re really watching, and you can’t figure out if he’s acting or if he’s genuinely pissed off with Dean’s printed-out instructions, you can’t even tell if the story about his dad’s death is real. Artifice, reality, fiction, truth – it’s all jumbled up to create a staggeringly compelling film. It doesn’t need narrative, it doesn’t need to make a statement, it just lays everything out there. It’s like watching a painting unfold over 50 minutes, full of mystery, intrigue and emotion. Dean has captured something special and powerful here. Shame about those bloody cloud drawings.