“Reality is something you have to rise above”. - Liza Minnelli This small work is based on a paparazzi photo taken in 1977 of Liza Minnelli with the dancer and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov in the New York nightclub Studio 54. At the time, when Minnelli was married to the director Jack Haley, she was also embroiled in affairs with both Baryshnikov and Martin Scorsese. Titling the piece with Minnelli and Baryshnikov’s first names alone, Fowler evokes the false sense of familiarity often felt with stars. This sense of mutual understanding serves to draw the viewer into their intimacy. By removing the figures from the context of Studio 54 and imposing white space around them, Fowler alludes to the way in which their affair became dislocated from immediate circumstance, translated into public property by intensive press scrutiny. The sense of an illicit glimpse hints at the affair’s transgressive appeal, with rumours and jealousy simmering beneath the surface of public personae. Meticulously cut-out paper tiles float infinitely into the background, realising the tumult of supposition and imagination in material terms.