Indestructible

Indestructible is an unflinching examination of nauseatingly complex, and just plain nauseating, interplay between gender and power in the contemporary art world.⭐⭐⭐⭐

North West End

Catherine Shaw spent the 90s shocking the art world with her provocative performance art. She’s always called herself a feminist, but looking back through the lens of #MeToo, she’s questioning how much she enabled the culture she now sees being called out. An ambitious Curator approaches her to put together an exhibition of female Artists at a major new gallery; a scandal breaks and unwittingly caught in the centre, she begins to question everything.

Can we, and should we, separate the art from the artist? How far do the ripples of consequence spread? And why is it so often women who are expected to hold the moral space?

Indestructible takes in uncompromising female Artists, from Lee Miller to the Guerrilla Girls via Sinead O’Connor and Taylor Swift, to ask: why is it still so difficult for female Artists to succeed? And why are women always the Muse, never the Artist?
Using animation and AI-generated projections, ‘Sharp art-world dramady’ (Theatre Weekly) Indestructible is a highly visual, surprisingly funny and fiercely theatrical show from award-winning Proteus that asks serious and vital questions about cancel culture and accountability.

Indestructible makes for a hugely entertaining, important, and engaging piece of theatre. It’s a play that audiences will take with them long after the house lights come up.

-Reviews Hub

Extending the world of Indestructible

Blurring the worlds of gallery and theatre and drawing on the visual language and art speak of gallery websites, Proteus theatre commissioned digital artist Paula Varjack and web developer Ben Gregory to create a website for the [fictional] gallery MOCA North.

The website includes additional material that extends the narrative outside the physical show: a virtual gallery and online guide for the Indestructible exhibition, an interview with Catherine Shaw. The gallery of 26 artworks features real work by emerging and established female artists alongside fictional digital works created with AI, raising questions about truth, authorship and the rising using of digital creative tools across art forms.

MOCA North.com features work made by Paula and Ben under the character pseudonyms Catherine Shaw and Beatrice Gaskin, alongside work by Paula herself and then pieces created by other emerging visual artists: Naomi Escott, Laura Greenway, Imogen Reeves, Susan Francis and Claire Prouton.

Read more about the project in this article written originally written for Clapham Omnibus Theatre in January 2024.

Have you heard about the Indestructible Podcast?

Can you separate the art from the artist? How do you approach artworks you love after you discover the artist has behaved reprehensibly, abominably, illegally?

Indestructible – The Podcast explores these questions with artists, actors, curators and directors  in a series that also examines the challenges of building a career in the theatre industry, and champions creative women from a range of disciplines whose work may not have enjoyed the exposure it deserves. Listen to episodes here.