Tracey Rose
For King and Cunt (2007/2017)
Rose made this work in London, while undertaking a master’s in fine art at Goldsmiths College. She had intended to do a performance which involved urinating on St Paul’s Cathedral, the most important building of the Anglican Church, but when this proved impossible to realize Rose rethought the work. She was photographed pissing on the table at the Tate Modern members’ club, members clubs also traditionally being a symbol of white, male, colonial power and establishment privilege. This image was then super-imposed onto a photograph of St. Paul’s and the Thames embankment, the most famous image of London and British imperial reach.
The ludicrous mismatch of scales between Rose and the background calls to mind Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the 1958 horror movie in which a woman unwittingly grows into a giant and towers destructively over the city. Rose’s Union Jack outfit had been made as her costume for a performance work, Shittin’ Bullion, in which she ate foods from colonized countries and then defecated in front of her fellow master’s students at the university.
Rose had the resulting, composite image printed in large scale and, as she carried the rolled print to the framer it started to rain, impregnating the work with London raindrops. The gold frame was chosen as a reference to the gaudiness and ostentatious display of wealth in the framing of pictures in the National Gallery, and indeed the national galleries of all European countries. A symbol of royal power and, ultimately, its fraudulence.