Claire Flannery explores Tamsyn Challenger's latest solo show at Transition Gallery in Hackney.
Inert puppets, motionless and emotionless, are freaky. But the Tamsynettes are not, not to me anyway. They certainly aren't grotesque or particularly unsettling in themselves, and despite the fact that Tamsyn Challenger is said to be concerned with time's ravaging attitude towards the female body, little of this is initially felt. There are four Tamsynettes – wooden, varnished and partially painted red. The name is presumably a take on both the artist's own and the puppet type, marionette. A sort of self-portrait.
The figures are that of a young woman with a wig of rich black hair complete with the signs or symbols of vanity and insecurity – stark white make-up and Aunt Sally blushered cheeks. One stands upright, its puppet controlling crucifix and strings intact. Another sits limp, its controller discarded haphazardly on the ground. A third is prostrate, its strings cut, its controller nowhere to be seen. A fourth is completely dismembered and scattered around the gallery floor. This sounds violent, like an obvious reference to the visceral real-life scenes of gender violence that Tamsyn has born witness to as a documentarian. Yet the atmosphere is calm, but not even eerily calm; just still. It's like entering the props room at a theatre on a nice sunny day.
Tamsyn lets us ease ourselves into the space between her sculptures and the interpretations we might alight upon when contemplating them. Transition Gallery is a neat, small space, and I wonder whether a bigger gallery would allow room for more puppets and therefore more of the freaky effect that I'd hoped for. I doubt it though.
Tamsyn's interest in fairytales could be the answer to this subversion. Fairytales that wrap up violence, package and polish it, delight in it and make it suitable for all the family must surely be an important ingredient in the Tamsynette recipe. The artist is onto something for sure, but I feel like this is just the start of the story, part of the conversation. Perhaps Tamsyn herself is going to continue it or perhaps it is up to us the audience to take our cue and do what we like with the puppets. Project, reflect, inject, subject...just as we do with real people whose strings are, for the most part, invisible.
The Tamsynettes is at Transition Gallery until 18th April 2010.
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