Jennifer Allen, still from the video 'Strip Show', 2006
Newly graduated with distinction from her MA at Goldsmiths, Jennifer Allen is currently combining her artistic practice with research for her PhD. Whilst this entails the usual amount of hard work and long hours that most people would expect to go hand in hand with research, in Allen's case it also involves her spending a significant amount of time working in pole-dancing and strip clubs. She views the experience as a means of enabling her to continue with dance - something she has valued as a means of 'escape' since childhood - but it also affords her the opportunity of earning money and (perhaps most importantly of all to her right now) it means she is able to freely observe the playing out of the unspoken but carefully policed rules and rituals that exist between clients and girls in strip clubs, a balance of power that has fascinated Allen and fed into the main body of her work with video and performance for the last five years.
Allen thinks her observations go largely unnoticed because 'no one really expects one of the girls to be looking at this from an academic or theoretical perspective - they just think I'm here to dance - I don't think they've got any idea I'm collecting material for research. And it's not encouraged for any of the girls to be anything other than a performer for the clients - as soon as you do that you've crossed the line and the illusion disappears and you can lose your job.'
Allen first began table- and pole-dancing when she moved from her home town of Birmingham to London in 2001 to begin her MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. She wasn't happy with the course because she felt it was directed towards 'something finished and perfect' and didn't afford her sufficient space to experiment or even to fail - something she felt she needed to confront if she was to going to drive her work forwards. Allen dropped out and worked on her own for a while, a need for funds prompting her to start dancing regularly at various well known table- and pole-dancing clubs in London's East End before she returned to art school - this time to Goldsmiths' MA Fine Art course.
Allen has clearly benefited from the support of tutors such as Jemima Stehli - no stranger to stripping herself thanks to her well-documented 'Striptease' (2000) where she took off her clothes for various well-known men of the art-world such as Adrian Searle and Matthew Collings. Allen clearly appreciates Stehli's good humour, as - punctuated by bursts of infectious laughter - she recounts Stehli's tale of a stripper who accidentally farted during one of her performances but far from putting off the clients, they enjoyed it, so she incorporated it into her act. Allen suddenly becomes very serious: 'It's funny how we can laugh about something like that because we know it's not supposed to happen. It's all about the context, the rules - everything is supposed to be a certain way. For example, at nearly all the clubs the girls are only allowed to wear red, pink or white nail polish, and they have to have three outfits - an evening dress, a bikini and a thong. If the girls have short hair then they are told to wear wigs - usually blonde - and although you're encouraged to wear a lot of make-up it has to be the 'right' kind of make up. I knew one girl who was told she wore too much dark make-up and when she asked the owner what was wrong with that, the owner said "The men don't like it if you look like a goth - it reminds them too much of their teenage daughters".'
Allen and I discuss the other 'expectations' of the dancers. I ask what would happen if she didn't shave her armpits or wax - or worse - if she had a bad wax and got a rash? She roars with laughter - 'I wouldn't be able to work. I'd quite like to do a dance with hairy armpits though - to see what would happen, how it would affect the clients and the reactions of the other girls.'
Allen explains that the girls are very competitive and that usually the curvier, blonde girls earn more money. She pokes fun of this stereotype in her video 'Strip Show' (2006) where she executes a private dance for a middle aged man while he looks on appreciatively. There are several twists to this piece though. Firstly, Allen is sporting a gargantuan pair of prosthetic breasts that appear comic, even monstrous they are so disproportionate to the rest of her body. Secondly, the man in her video is known to Allen and isn't interested in blondes. He became a regular at one of the clubs where she was working and always asked for her. Despite the rigid rules between client and dancer, Allen agreed to perform some private dances for him in a hotel room and he subsequently agreed to participate in her film although he never actually witnessed the prosthetic breasts, neither did he see Allen smearing her body with mashed up food - an act devised to evoke maximum discomfort, even disgust in the viewer.
Allen sees her films as provoking both humour and discomfort. Some of the scenarios she depicts are decidedly funny, but more often than not they bewilder the viewer and feel very intimidating - for who wants to laugh out loud at something in front of a room full of people, only to discover that everyone else has realized the situation is far from amusing? 'Happy Christmas Mom and Dad' (2006) falls into this category. It features Allen's parents as the unknowing protagonists settling down together on the sofa on Christmas day, only to be surprised by their daughter offering to dance for them and then proceeding to strip. The work reads convincingly as 'real', and the parents' reactions, cringe-worthy.
Unsurprisingly Allen cites Paul McCarthy as a key influence on her practice but her work is so evidently her own, with her body the starting point of all investigations into the self, context, identity and otherness, that it is clear that her own experiences and background are also vital for her practice. Allen has talked in the past about the difficulties she encountered as a result of growing up in Birmingham as the child of a white mother and a black father. Her sense of discomfort increased when she went up to Oxford to the Ruskin School and became a member of St John's College - one of the richest and arguably the most traditional of Oxford's colleges. She was acutely conscious of her accent being different and of feeling conspicuous and craving home - but when she returned to Birmingham, she no longer felt she could slot back in there either. She felt disoriented and angry - and this came through in her work for a while in paintings and films that were sometimes overtly aggressive, and often accompanied by a definitive slogan - but one that was usually balanced by her sense of humour.
Today, there is less aggression coming through in Allen's work but no less humour. What is most apparent though is how strong the work has become. No longer is Allen trying to produce a definitive statement or to wag an accusatory finger, instead she's managing to do something much more difficult - it's as though she's onside for the dancer, the client, the partner, the child, and the parent, as well as the viewer. By forcing us to think from everyone's perspective - such as in 'Happy Christmas Mom and Dad' where we squirm at the distress of the parents as they watch their daughter gyrating in her underwear; or wonder at what might have prompted their daughter to do this, and then catch ourselves locked between the compulsion to keep on looking and the revulsion at what we are witnessing - Allen succeeds in confronting us with the reality behind the theatre of all the roles we play and the complexity of all relationships - a fact she compounds by the decision to direct the viewer away from the 'other' scenario of the strip club, and back to the inescapable familiarity of domesticity.
Jane Neal
Jennifer Allen is currently showing in 'The Dream of Putrefaction' alongside Michelangelo Antonioni, Amanda Beech, Luke Caulfield, Sean Dawson, Kirsten Glass, Dereck Harris, Marcus Harvey, Anton Henning, Josie McCoy, Marilyn Minter, Gavin Tremlett and William Tuck, at the Metropole galleries in Folkestone, Kent (until 25 February). The show will tour to the Fieldgate Gallery in Whitechapel, London later this year (2 March - 1 April) (Fieldgate Gallery: 14 Fieldgate st London E1 1ES).
Allen is also taking part in a two-person show with Jo Wilmot entitled 'Spit Roast' at Gallery 33, Berlin (19 February - 31 March 2007).
Jennifer Allen is represented by Charlie Smith London.
Jennifer Allen, still from the video 'Happy Christmas Mom & Dad', 2006
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