Photo/Copy/Archive
As part of Matthews’ 2021 show my body’s an exhibition at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Matthews created a series of collage works that responded to the site, the building and its history, activating parts of its archive through a personal lens.
Matthews reflects that he never had the stereotypical muscular body that most male dancers are expected to have. Ann Reiking once commented in a rehearsal, “Chris you are not cut from the same cookie cutter as most dancers are cut from”.
The Photo/Copy/Archive series was made by photocopying sections of the Sadler’s Wells’ performance posters from the last 80 years, to collect fragments of “marketable” bodies of dancers. Matthews has re-assembled these “cookie cutter” pieces into collages of disfigured monsters, reshaping our perceptions of the body through the creation of new posters.
Images courtesy of the Sadler’s Wells Archive at Islington Local History Centre.
