Paul Insect Killer Clown, 2008 Spray Paint and Shellac on wood panel
12th to 21st September 2008
At a former bath house in King’s Cross , 9 Caledonian Road, Kings
Cross, N1 9DX
At odds with the location and in contrast with the contrived health and voluptuousness of the classic Playboy bunny, twelve skeletal bunny girls are the stars of this show. Luridly coloured with a metallic paint the bronze sculptures, entitled ‘Playmates’, reveal Insect’s concern to pick over and appropriate the visual vocabulary of popular culture, and subvert it with a satirist’s eye.
The ‘Playmates’ presented in this exhibition are hardly the fantasy calendar girls of our collective dreams but instead offer a savage andwitty comment on sexuality in the consumer age. As our heroines sportkitsch memorabilia (including Heffner-esque bunny ears and a cast of the fangs worn by Udo Kier in Andy Warhol’s cult 1974 film Blood for Dracula), and adopt sometimes less-than-ladylike poses, they show how the margins of exploitation and erotica, sex and death, can become Intriguingly blurred.
Poisonwill also feature a new series of paintings, doctored icons and prints which ask similar questions about the seamy world we have made for ourselves, with Insect?s typically irreverent and dark humour. Vibrantand sometimes shocking depictions of sex, violence and unholy saints
jolt the viewer into rethinking their assumptions about women, men,
religion, politics and art.
