Monster Chetwynd

Monster Chetwynd made the sculptures and costumes in A Tax Haven Run By Women as an installation and to be used for live performances. The performances imagine an anarchic game-show style competition between two teams. ‘Women Who Refuse to Grow Old Gracefully’, inspired by strong female figures like dancer and singer Josephine Baker and actor and singer Mae West, is pitted against ‘The Oppressed Purée’. The teams compete via a dance-off for a ride to a tax haven (a place with very low tax for foreign investors). They travel in the Catbus, a character from Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbour Totoro (1988). Meanwhile, other performers act as a repulsive male authority figure and a group of seals, which control the soundtrack.

Chetwynd’s performances and costumes are absurd, irreverent and spontaneous, but also often stem from research into economics, anthropology and maverick individuals. A Tax Haven Run By Women reflects on the similarity between cults and tax havens. Both tend to exist in remote locations isolated from regular society. Chetwynd says: ‘The performance is weirdly a combination of goofy, dreamlike Mae West women running a tax haven which is this wonderful place where you do actually want to be, and the kind of scary arsehole cult leader gone wrong.’

Chetwynd often works with friends and family as performers. The artist describes creating costumes and props quickly, driven by excitement, saying ‘this is often interpreted as ‘wilful amateurism’, but actually I would explain it as a preservation of the original sense of fun’.