Donna Huddleston’s works are both fragile and robust, made up of the faintest marks and tones yet highly suggestive in the slivers of information they give away. This image is part of a larger work shown at the Drawing Room in London, and made up of multiple different pieces of paper which fit together almost puzzle-like. The whole work shows a group of young adults carrying a girl who seems to have passed out, some appearing concerned and looking around, others trying to engage with her. The white background renders their setting obsolete, and it’s only the stylized clothes that hint at a place or time here—perhaps we find ourselves in the seventies. The title serves as another clue, as does a piece of writing which accompanies the show. “The hours were long, the regime was brutal…” it begins. “The students of theatre design were, it transpired, supposed to suffer. To collude with a culture of professional crises.” Drama is at hand in many ways here—in the affectation of the subjects, in the girl’s theatrical collapse, and in the artist’s presentation of what could be a humdrum moment in the lives of a group of students.
