At the centre of Fowler’s show at the Cob Gallery, are her life-size ‘leaning boards’ – reconstructions of the off-screen props on which film-starlets would rest between takes, in order to relax without crumpling their dresses. Forgotten today and overlooked in their time, these boards seemed to exist in a perpetual duality between their own mundanely mechanical weight and the supposed lightness of the stardust they supported. In ‘That’s Right Mister, and How’s your Fairy Tale Coming Along’, the leaning boards were seen for the first time – a perfect extension of ideas presented in Nina’s work; the supposed stillness in the heat of the moment. Her use of labour-intensive manual draftsmanship is integral to this, working in counterpoint with the instantaneousness of cinematography and the conventional immediacy of monochrome, wrenching the fullest possible capacity from the still image before it passes swiftly by.

Read ‘That’s Right Mister…’

WRITTEN BY David Anderson

Read further writing and essays in response to the subjects and themes relating to the work of Nina Mae Fowler here.