Title: Kefuffle   see image >> 22m x 15.4m Scanachrome from original photo-booth photographs A deeply voyeuristic image tantalises the viewer - enticing us into a visual game of 'what is behind that curtain?' The red drape plays with the idea of concealing a wrapped Broadcasting House, prior to revealing a transformed building to the public. The startling colour of this resonant and striking photographic collage, jumps out at us, grasping our attention, as the hands pull back the fabric symbolising dramatic action and communication. In Shakespeare's Hamlet there is mystery and intrigue - the death of Polonius behind the arras...the mutable fabric symbolising and representing the demarcation line between reality and fantasy, this world and that - here, Rideal uses drapery as subject: cloth in, and as, performance. The curtain, vestige of the theatre and a relic of the painted portrait, is manipulated to perform within the miniature space of the mundane photo-booth. The tiny photographs (measuring 5 x 4 cms) provide the basic elements for this transformation into giant artwork, provoking our suspension of disbelief. This visual conundrum; a celebration of the evolution of the dramatic arts from radio through to digital t.v. will disappear: inviting the audience to become the spectators of the future BBC. << back