Photograph by Andy Keate, courtesy of Gasworks, London.

 

Adulteress stages a sequence described in Rachilde's novel Monsieur Venus: a Materialist Novel (1884). This sequence sees the submissive, feminine Jacques Silvert slip away from Raoule Silvert (née de Vénérande), his domineering, masculine wife, to walk the streets in a black velvet dress and attempt to seduce a ‘real man’. In this chapter of Rachilde's writing (which can be read on-screen across the duration of Adulteress) this transgression is experienced from the point of view of Raoule, who is wild with jealousy, and who tracks Jacques down at their friend M. de Raittolbe's, where Jacques's attempted seduction has been a spectacular failure, precipitating a suicide attempt and a duel to the death. The moving image counters this passage; we see someone playing Jacques enter a barn in Glasgow full of friends and well-wishers, where he meets someone playing Jacques's sister, Marie, who does his make-up and hair and dresses him in a long black dress, with a mantilla. The film closes with an aroused, nervous and excited Jacques leaving the barn to pursue his seduction of M. de Raittolbe, while, due to the differences in filmic and textual time, the deadly consequences of his adventure can be read on screen.

With Adam Benmakhlouf as Jacques and Charlotte Percival as Marie. Also featuring Andrew Black, Alice Brooke, Jamie Crewe, Robert Leckie, Peter McKenna, John Turrell, Tom Turrell, Matthew Williams, and Sgàire Wood. Filmed by John and Tom Turrell. Make up by Charlotte Percival. Driving by Matthew Williams.

In Female Executioner, at Gasworks, London, which opened in January 2017, this work occupied the first white room of the gallery, alongside Inert being (2017) and Miserable wretch (2017). Through an improperly sealed transplanted doorway there was a woad-blue second room, which contained Stone breaker (2017) and Wax figure (2017).