Ulla von Brandenburg has made a number of works based on the idea of the tableau vivant, or 'living picture'. Popular in the nineteenth century, the tableau vivant was a combination of fine art and theatre, with live models carefully posed and lit in a composition like that of a painting or photograph. Kugel (2007) is staged in a garden, in which von Brandenburg films a reflection of the figures in the curved surface of a mirrored ball. The artist and her camera are also reflected, emphasising the constructed artifice of the scene. The figures themselves appear to belong to the past, though it is hard to pin them down to any specific period, adding to the ghostly sense of frozen time.

Von Brandenburg’s Curtain (2007) is a reconstruction of the patchwork curtain specially designed in 1932 for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratfordupon-Avon. A slight gap where the curtains meet in the middle heightens our sense of the divide between performers and audience, and raises the question: which side are we on?

Pawel Althamer | Cezary Bodzianowski | Ulla Von Brandenburg | Jeremy Deller | Trisha Donnelly | Geoffrey Farmer | Andrea Fraser | Dominique Gonzalez - Foerster | Jeppe Hein | Renata Lucas | Rita McBride | Roman Ondák | Markus Schinwald | Tino Sehgal | Catherine Sullivan | Mario Ybarra Jr