Holy Toy

Black Queen - Hew Locke (UK)
*decomposition made of plastic black guns, plastic flowers, plastic lizards, plastic colored shiny beads (I would call Mardi Gras beads) & more layers...are they toys anymore in this context?


Summer Exhibition: Holy Toy

Jørgen Furuholt
20 June 2010
Saturday 26 June opens Sølvberget Gallery 's summer exhibition.

Holy Toy argues that toy through four contemporary artists.

Toys as a material and expression has been a renewed interest and dissemination of contemporary art in recent years , both at home and abroad.

Holy Toy is an exhibition that reflects this fact and argues that the toy applications through four very unique artist .

Haugar Tone Lyngstad Nyaas is a curator for the exhibition , and selected artists who all use this type of objects in a playful and humorous way.

At the same time connects the art references clearly depends to different societies current problems .

Recently deceased Kjartan Slettemark must be regarded as a key persons within the group, and as a leading figure in terms of using the toy as ready- mades in his artistic production.



Briton Hew Locke

Who with this show for the first time, show their work in the Nordic countries , uses like Slettemark an almost karnevalistisk (Carnivalesque) expression in her large portrait reliefs. With humorous edge cuisine , he highlights a number of ingrained and oppressive social mechanisms.

The Danish artist Maria Rubinkes small porcelain figures relates to an surreal as illogical combinations , and shows lovely objects transformed into an expression of more taboo feelings of desire and imagination.
Her exhibition in his gallery Alf in Copenhagen this spring , aroused great interest and was featured in full pages in Politiken , the Stock Exchange and Elle .

Frederick Raddum plays cartoons, popart and massmediale clichés in their complex objects, where the seemingly naïve in the formulation only reinforces the existential theme .
For this exhibition he has created a new work with a slide set up among vrakdelene of a crashed aircraft.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog and open to the public Saturday 26 June at 14.00. Maria Rubinke will be present at the opening

Link to Culture House Gallerie, Stavanger: http://www.stavanger-kulturhus.no/soelvberget_galleri/sommerutstilling_holy_toy

Link to Kuntsforum, the Norwegian art magazine for more photos of all 4 artists:
http://andregali.blogspot.com/2010/02/holy-tou-haugar-vestfold-museum-of-art.html





(note: just click on the photo of the white porcelain baby head in an ice cream cone with pink icing on top & what looks like a melted golden candle, or I dare not guess...we were not allowed to take photos when we went in - most of them I wouldn't want to take photos of?!)


Congo Man - in this series, called "How do you want me" he's actually standing inside his art as someone else photographs


Hew Locke Bio:

Hew Locke was born in Edinburgh in 1959.
He completed his BA at Falmouth School of Art in 1988 and his MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1994.
In recent years Locke has focused on his fascination and ambivalence around ideas and images of Britishness in a global context, such as the royal family. Locke explores global cultural fusions, creating complex sculptural collages with an eclectic range of objects, including mass produced toys, souvenirs and consumer detritus.
The artist's personal history - he spent the first seven years of his life in Edinburgh before moving to the newly independent Guyana and later returning to London in the 1980s - feeds into his ongoing interest in the links between personal and national identity.
Locke has exhibited extensively within the UK...
In the US he has exhibited at the Luckman Gallery LA, Atlanta Contemporary Arts and at the Brooklyn Museum...
Hew Locke is represented by Hales Gallery, London.

Link to BP Artist Talk to hear Hew Locke speak about his art & show slides...

http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/22448950001#media:/media/22448950001&context:/channel/search?searchQuery=hew+locke

(Note: it's really long, over an hour, but if you're up for some interesting insight into this artist's work then click on the link to the video - esp. after going to stand in front of his pieces on exhibit at Holy Toy here, which may make you curious like it did me....)



*close up of another decomposition - said he screws everything onto to a board, or he has assistants now that do as well (cannot imagine the nuts & bolts behind these constructions)

List of ways to describe him/his art, taken from the BP Artist talk...

• Uses prizes, layers, power, metaphor & not just Carnivalesque



• It is an invented culture, more complex, mythical constructions, history unexplored



• Inspired by traveling around the world, slave trade, the historical, personal history



• Why the dripping of the beads? says from waterfalls of his Guyana



• When included in Caribbean art, he considers it the Caribbean diaspra



• Many times his work is referred to as exoticism



• On the monochrome & color, are 2 different sides of himself (ie classic/vulgar)



• Some of his drawings/paintings in museum exhibits include images from the actual museum, pieces of them taken apart & then put back together into one (usually giant) piece

Sinclair oil company share, Dino the mascot (*I remember him at gas stations when I was a kid, he was green & usually a blow up)

• Current work: old company stock shares (draw/paints on the actually paper certificates)
  
  
  Sikander - Hew Locke
  In the running for the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square, London
  On the short list to be decided early 2011
  
  
  Photos: copyright all to Hew Locke and DACS
  
  Artist webpage Link: http://www.hewlocke.net/

*Note: I would love to shop for this artist & I'm thinking that box load of leftover Mardi Gras Beads in storage would be right up his alley?!
*anything noted above with this asterisk (aka from latin--meaning little star) are my own notes, in case you didn't get that--just wanted to make it clear

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