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On one level Lyn Plummer's installation deals with matter of (im)balance-notably, the place of women in art historical representation. The seven imposing fragile/strong free-standing forms measure up to almost five metres high and are positioned like chess figures, in keeping with the semantics of the title, Endgame. The fragile/ strong dichotomy indicates the precariousness of any enterprise that would seek to redress an (im)balance.
The hard-looking geometric and metallic coloured 'bones' of the pieces contrast markedly with the organic matter that drapes and shrouds the skeletal structures. it is this somewhat anxious unity of apparent opposites in Plummer's work that carries her emotive request to us to reassess our socially received notions of 'femininity' and 'masculinity'-a theme with which Plummer has frequently dealt.
The seven forms of this installation are mounted on pedestals (or circus podiums), and some fabric spills onto the floor. This has the effect of endowing the works with a remoteness, a sense of ceremony, an apparently untouchable quality. It is as though we have entered some manner of temple, or sacred chamber. The setting is at once ethereal and charged with atmospheric power. It suggests that the concerns of sexual politics are not the sole object of Plummer's investigation, that also she hypothesizes upon the notion of the social universality of the rite.
An initial reaction to the veil-draped forms of the installation is to construct a possible connection to Salome and her celebrated dance of the seven veils. This idea, however, can be dismissed as rapidly as it is entertained because it is not, in fact, the seduction process we are witnessing but its end result-endgame-checkmate-no further moves possible-entrapment ; the Bride of Shahmat (or