ROSE FINN-KELCEY

Bull’s Eye (1985), performed as part of The British Show in Sydney, presents the artist as matador, bull and croupier. It focuses on the cliched and cultural figure of the matador, gambling with both life and money. “Over many months Finn-Kelcey insinuated herself into the lore and costume of the bullfighter and the flamenco dancer, a role which appealed to her liking for perfect control and grooming, for a male/female ambiguity, for the glittering Suit of Lights, and for the ritual which engenders its own sense of perfection, and, unwittingly of the absurd. With a ring through her nose, she became the bull too, attacker and attacked at once.” (Guy Brett, 2013)

Suit of Lights (1986-1990), a performance for video titled after ‘traje de luces’, is named after the traditional clothing which bullfighters wore in the bullring, based on the flamboyant costumes of 18th century dandies and showmen who ‘dressed to kill’. A long utilitarian red cape was used to entice the bull to charge. Although the Spanish tradition of bullfighting is today controversial, Finn-Kelcey both pays homage to and critiques the bullfight and its brutal imbalance of power whilst engaging in the lore and power of the glistening, ornate costume.

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy (1976) was presented over two days and nights in the window of Acme Gallery in Covent Garden. It features the artist alongside a pair of magpies, which she called her ‘alter egos’. Finn-Kelcey interacts with the birds as female ‘species’ on display, with their calls broadcast to passing onlookers. The performance was a direct response to Joseph Beuys’ habitation with a coyote, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974). It also signalled her early interest in making transitory and ephemeral work, and the search for her role as a female artist in a male-dominated art world.

Finn-Kelcey’s precise and sophisticated performances challenged assumed roles of power and changes of state, as well as raising issues of gender within a feminist context. Alchemy, transformation, control and power play feature heavily across the three works, often in relation to the animal world. She visually dramatised tensions between opposing forces, making visible the dichotomy between the oppressed and oppressor, issues of gender, and positions of risk, threat and empowerment.

Rose Finn-Kelcey lived and worked in London. Solo exhibitions include Bureau de Change, Tate Britain, London, UK (2019); Rose Finn-Kelcey: Power For The People, Firstsite, Colchester, UK (2018); Rose Finn-Kelcey: Life, Belief and Beyond, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK (2017); Rose Finn-Kelcey, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK (2006); Bureau de Change, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2003) and Rose Finn-Kelcey, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (1997).

Group exhibitions include Here is a Gale Warning, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK (2025); Women in Revolt! Art, Activism and the Women’s movement in the UK 1970-1990, Tate Britain, London (2023); It Is Just A Beginning, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy (2018); Sculptors’ Papers from the Henry Moore Institute Archive, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2015); Keywords: Art, Culture & Society in 1980s Britain, Tate Liverpool, UK (2014); Modern British Sculpture, The Royal Academy of Art, London, UK (2011); Live in Your Head: Concept and Experiment in Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2000); Young British Artists Part 2, The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (1993) and Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object 1949-1979, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA (1998).

This exhibition is curated in collaboration with Andrée Cooke, designer, curator and Artistic Executor for the Estate of Rose Finn-Kelcey and artist Simon Moretti.