For her first retrospective exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery in 2018, Sonia Boyce worked with the gallery team, invited artist-collaborators and gallery visitors to produce a new commission that would explore how the politics of gender, race and sexuality in the gallery’s 18^th and 19^th century painting displays could be reconsidered for today.

Six Acts began with a conversation. In Spring 2017, a series of group discussions led by the artist with members of the gallery team developed around the gallery collection, how it is displayed and interpreted, with particular focus on the displays of 18^th and 19^th century artworks, which have remained the same since the gallery re-opened in 2002. The conversations expanded to include gallery staff, volunteers, gallery visitors and artist-collaborators. The process culminated in an evening gallery takeover in January 2018, where the artist invited several drag performers to respond to a number of artworks on display in the galleries.

Wearing a long white dress, artist Lasana Shabazz performed in response to a number of artworks on display to fictionalise the character of Ira Aldridge, a renowned 19^th century Shakespearan actor, stepping out of his portrait Othello the Moor of Venice, 1826, by James Northcote. Drag, an acronym for ‘dressed resembling a girl’ and also thought to refer to the weight of a skirt dragging on the floor, is often associate with the Shakespearan period of theatre when female roles were exclusively performed by males. Aldridge was the first black actor to play white roles and would ‘white up’ or paint his face white to play characters such as Macbeth, Shylock and King Lear. As part of his performance, Shabazz sang Camptown Races, written by Stephen Foster in 1850 to mock the speech patterns of African – Americans. It later became the basis for a football chant Two World Wars and One World Cup after England won the World Cup against West Germany in 1966.

Contemporary drag artists Anna Phylactic, Cheddar Gorgeous, Liquorice Black and Venus Vienna were invited to respond to artworks of their choice and the title of one of the galleries, In Pursuit of Beauty.

One of the six performative acts that night was the temporary take down of a painting, Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, by JW Waterhouse, replacing it with a series of questions and deliberately leaving a space to encourage further conversation.

The takeover was filmed and documented, resulting in the six channel installation Six Acts, where each of the six screens represents an ‘act’ that took place during the gallery takeover; the five performances by invited artists and the temporary removal of the painting.