The revellers were apparently hurled back into a non-rational, pre-intellectual state, where the personality was replaced by something completely different - and by ‘different’, I mean something to all appearances not mortal. Inhuman. *

Julian Morrow in The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tart

The Greek root for ‘ecstasy’ is ekstasis, meaning ‘to stand outside yourself’ – a feeling pursued by those who wish to escape or seek renewal through the suspension of rational thought and action.

Frances Goodman’s new solo exhibition at SPECTA entitled Ecstasy takes as its subject the quest for meaning where material needs, wants and de-sires have been mollified and money is no object. Perhaps ‘the void’ is felt more keenly by those unable to obscure it with the pursuit of basic earthly requirements. Ecstasy considers existential anguish as it is expressed and expunged by the privileged few.

Two sequin-embroidered panel works Beckoning and The Dance draw the viewer directly into the realm of iridescent release. The Dance is titled after Matisse’s famous painting (1910), and follows Goodman’s interest in historical depictions of women in nature. Goodman’s The Dance consists of three panels featuring heavily made-up figures in sparkling, otherworldly costumes moving in a formation that mimics the circle of dancing bodies in Matisse’s work. In Beckoning, a lone figure in a Bridgerton-worthy headdress offers a quick, come-hither look as she disappears into dense green foliage.

Beckoning and The Dance gesture to a culture of carefully curated, ritualised contemporary retreats, festivals and parties in which substantial capital outlay enables temporary access to immersive, redemptive and hedonistic experi-ence. Such events vary dramatically in scope, scale and in the nature of their offerings, but the promotion of healing, self-expression and the shifting of perspective through ceremonial and participatory performance, dance, guided mediation, cultural appropriation, burnt offerings and the use of psychedelics and ecstasy are common features.

The desire to get out of your mind is not the exclusive preserve of the rich, nor is the pursuit of healing and psycholo-gical release through ritual, ceremony, drug-taking, or a combination of these. For the purposes of Ecstasy however, Goodman is characteristically interested in cultural commodification and social capital. In this case, that means the outfits, the make-up, the glamour and the aesthetic and financial excesses associated with a particular cultural phenomenon. Characteristically also, Goodman’s magical, alluring surfaces and blunt missives both marvel at, and critique her subject.

Chloë Reid