"Fondant: existing within a suspended and transitory moment, the Panorama space becomes a kaleidoscopic boudoir for a past made after, the setting for a scene which is both anticipated and already over, for the pleasures obsessed by desirous objects. Confectionary, icing, moistness, fluids, fusions, lavas… The title and its connotations set the tone for the frozen spectacle orchestrated by Zoe Williams. Caught in a glistening crust, a honeyed heart is just waiting to spread. The images carried by the title announce the recurrent themes of the artist: taste, excess, eroticism, flames, the margins and therefore sexual politics, symbolic stakes of power and domination, consumption, and the economy of goods.

Fondant is simultaneously an exhibition and a scene exploring notions of artifice, camp, and class through sometimes forced interactions between the set and the bodies that engage with it, who are cast as: witnesses, accomplices, voyeurs and victims."

Vincent Honoré

Fondant Exhibition views- Zoe Williams - © Agnes Mellon. Courtesy of the artist and Ciaccia Levi Paris-Milan

‘Smears of the Night’

During the opening evening, the space was activated by 'Smears of the Night', a new durational performance , orchestrated by Zoe Williams in collaboration with artist and performer Nadja Voorham and musician, Vindicatrix, who produced and composed the soundtrack for the space. Isosceles Lingerie also created costume elements for the piece.

The performance was initiated by Zoe Williams and made in collaboration with Nadja Voorham. The performance was conceived to be a live activation of the Fondant space on the opening evening of the exhibition. Through the performance the artists wanted to heighten the sense of a synthetic, insular world and a sense of paranoia and claustrophobia. They also wanted to explore notions of power exchange, play, submission and control and the erotic charges, that exist within this. The characters within the performance were conceived to embody and confuse certain archetypal roles. The motif of melting was explored both physically and metaphorically throughout the piece. Considering the terms connotations, through the melting of the body, the melting of self, the merging into one another and also of having a ‘meltdown’.

The characters consisted of an attendant figure dressed in a black suit, who monitored and tried to control the space, but also served the glamorous heroine character, who was both a captive and ruler of the space. The singer was Vindicatrix who also composed and produced the soundtrack for the exhibition and performance and appeared intermittently throughout the scene to deliver short operatic and sensual verses. 

Duration approx. 70 minutes

Artists: Nadja Voorham & Zoe Williams

Performers: Nadja Voorham, David Aird & Zoe Williams

Costume: Isosceles Lingerie

Soundtrack: Vindicatrix

Make up: Xenab Lone Jamil

Perfume: Carole Calvez

Opening performance Smears of the Night - Fondant, Zoe Williams in collaboration with Nadja Voorham, Vindicatrix, and Isosceles Lingerie. © Agnes Mellon