NARRATOR:
The Great Pageant Show is a chromogenic colour print created in around 1997 by Holly Lee. The image itself is 118 centimetres high and 87.7 centimetres wide. When framed, the overall dimensions of the piece are 134 centimetres high, 103.5 centimetres wide, and 4.8 centimetres deep.
The photograph is a realistic portrait of a woman who looks like a cross between a young Queen Elizabeth II and a Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant contestant. The figure, bedecked in finery, is shown from the waist up, centrally placed, and fills the space from the bottom almost to the top of the photograph. The painting’s background looks like an ancient Chinese painting that depicts a vast, open, grassy field dotted with trees where an equestrian event with over a hundred spectators is taking place. The scene is depicted from an elevated perspective. Situated in the upper left quadrant of the image, the spectators and riders are tiny in comparison to the main figure in the foreground of the work. We cannot make out their faces.
The main figure’s body is in three-quarter profile, turned towards our left, with her head facing towards us and returning our gaze. She wears a formal ivory coloured ballgown with thin straps and a fitted bodice that has pearls sewn into the front of it. A three-string pearl necklace adorns her neck, falling just at the collarbone. A bright, medium blue sash draped over her left shoulder and down across her torso, is emblazoned primarily on the shoulder with royal medals made of ribbons and medallions in tones of pink, silver, brown, and black. The figure wears a silver tiara in her short, neatly coiffed, dark hair; earrings with large, single pearls; and orangey-red lipstick. She appears to have a tattoo of an equestrian rider displayed prominently just below the shoulder on her upper left arm.
The tattoo may relate to imagery in the background, which appears to be a reproduction of an eighteenth-century Chinese court painting. The background scene is largely dark beige in tone with mere wisps of trees in muted hues of rust, pink, olive and tan depicted in the far distance along the top edge of the work. A few larger, more clearly defined, gnarled trees are tucked into the lower left corner. Five or six equestrians ride toward us through the upper left quadrant of the image in a single-file formation that arcs gently to our left. The tightly huddled group of spectators, clad mostly in light blue dress, is situated further back in space, in the upper left corner. The lead rider hoists a white flag over his head, while the rider behind him actually balances another figure over his head.
