ABSTRACT
Visiting Tate Modern, London, as it was in November 2007 visitors encounter an exhibition called The World as a Stage and within this event an opening exhibit by Slovakian artist Roman Ondak. Director of Tate Modern at the time, Vicente Todoli, proposed in his Foreword to the exhibition catalogue that, the ‘idea of “theatre” is treated by artists within The World as a Stage as both an analytic tool and a rich terrain to be explored, experimented with, and plundered. Invested in exploring the object-status of performative referents, American artist Trisha Donnelly contributes to The World as a Stage a work encountered by visitors and indeterminate instant related to the promise of performance. Considered alongside The World as a Stage, the art reframed by and displayed within Renoir at the Theatre can be reviewed in relation to current gallery-based intersections with practices of performance.
