Une Fête dans le Papier, an exhibition by Penelope Benton and Alexandra Clapham

10 January 2011

Penelope Benton, a Sydney based photography, performance and installation artist, and Alexandra Clapham, combine to present a representation of a Versailles-inspired ballroom made entirely out of cardboard.

In this recent collaboration Benton and Clapham propose to marry royalty by birth and royalty by imagination, constructing a Versailles-inspired ballroom entirely out of cardboard such as is associated with the early life of Basquiat the street-artist/dreamer: Basquiat’s cardboard box for a bed, Marie Antoinette’s palace.

In this necessarily flimsy set the two will hold a dinner party, a feast of unimaginable scope, which will be in full view of the public (most likely consisting of starving artists and hangers-on) who will be invited to later riot over the leftovers of the important guests in a literal free-for-all.

The exhibition opens at The Paper Mill, 1 Angel Place, Ash Street, Sydney, on Tuesday, 11 January, 2011 at 6pm, and concludes on the following Saturday, 15 January.

Originally published Monday 10 January 2011, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.