William Mackrell: Deux Chevaux, South Kensington

For artist William Mackrell’s performance, Deux Chevaux, South Kensington will become the stage for a horse-drawn show, punctuated by famed cultural sites 

Absurdity is a potent weapon in the artist’s armoury. It mocks the status quo, the accepted and the established, laying bare our illusions about conventional wisdom under its humorous and bizarre guise. Nowhere is this more evident than William Mackrell’s forthcoming performance Deux Chevaux. 

The performance

Essentially a live sculpture, the performance comprises the artist driving two horses attempting to pull a 2CV car through the borough of Kensington and Chelsea on 21st June. Mackrell has specifically devised a planned route around ‘Albertopolis’ – an area created as a result of Prince Albert’s vision to champion art, science and industrial development. 

This is the first time the performance will be carried out in public, and the more intrepid of you will be able to interact with it when it stops at nine cultural landmarks including Hyde Park and Victoria and Albert Museum , and culminating at the Andipa Gallery in Knightstbridge. Take note of some special accompanying events at various pit-stops (listings to the right). 

What is it about?

Behind the comic absurdity of the notion of ‘car as cart,’ the performance is both metaphor and serious critique. The 2 CV, Deux Chevaux or ‘deux chevaux-vapeur’ literally means 'steam horses' or two tax horsepower, and was originally designed in the 1930s France to motorise the large number of small-holder farmers. In Mackrell’s performance, the two horsepower car is being driven by two horses.

Additionally, the action explores the interaction between the mechanical/technological with the human/ organic. We find ourselves wondering which is driving the other and which is ultimately more powerful. Man’s reliance on the machine, whilst enabling him to do more, is ironically rendering him less able to cope with the natural world. 

Mackerell’s performance is at once thought provoking, bizarre and delightful and is bound to create much interest – but then the most absurd of things often do. One not to be missed.