Exhibition Guide
Starstruck
Contemporary Art and the Cult of Celebrity 25 April – 15 June 2008
Starstruck
Contemporary Art and the Cult of Celebrity 25 April – 15 June 2008
We live in a culture obsessed with celebrities. David Beckham’s latest hairstyle, the very public meltdown of Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse and her apparent need for “re-hab”; all these stories are capable of selling newspapers and magazines as much as, if not more, than pressing current affairs. Magazines like Heat, Closer and Star attempt to cater for our incessant appetite for consuming the lives of celebrities.
Starstruck brings together eight artists whose work is diverse both in content and media, yet they all engage with the world of celebrity in different yet often connected ways. Their explorations are sometimes celebratory and sometimes critical, and often both...
Mario Testino is one of the most celebrated photographers of today, particularly in the worlds of celebrity and fashion. His subjects include stars like Kate Moss, Madonna, Robbie Williams and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. He has also created advertising campaigns for clients such as Gucci, Versace, Gap and Burberry and his photographs have graced the pages of fashion magazines. Testino is immersed into a world of high glamour. His subjects are often primped and preened and beautifully posed. His are the kind of images that become steeped into our consciousness and re-inforce the glamour and status of the subject. Testino not only lives the dream, but is a key protagonist in creating it. Yasumasa Morimura has drawn upon iconic portraits of Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Greta Garbo. These are images which have become ingrained into our consciousness and seem to encapsulate beauty, glamour, desirability and achievement. Morimura re-creates these images as carefully as possible with the artist himself taking on the role of the subject. These works are created with meticulous attention to detail. Morimura has observed the wardrobe, make-up and pose of the sitter and the composition and lighting employed in the original photographs. They appear at once as a tender, celebratory homage to the stars and to the original photographs, yet they also contain an element of poignant tragedy. Morimura is a Japanese man which is clearly apparent in his photographs. Set within the context of the silver screen goddesses of Hollywood, he eloquently articulates a sense of isolation, of being “other” and of never quite being able to live the dream. Gavin Turk has also represented himself as another celebrity in a series of works in which his own identity is conflated with that of Andy Warhol. Turk’s work has consistently dealt with notions of authenticity, value and the mythology of the artist. For this exhibition, Turk has produced a series of screenprints on canvas which directly reference Andy Warhol and which draw upon a series of self-portraits created by the artist for an exhibition at Anthony d’Offay’s gallery in London in 1986. The self-portraits presented a typically deadpan view of Warhol characterised and effectively branded by his messy, blonde “fright-wig”. In Turk’s series of works however, it is Turk’s face that looks out at us from the canvas and it is Turk’s head that wears the “fright-wig”. In this very conscious connection with Warhol, Turk is once again exploring notions of authenticity, originality and the marketable identity of a personality, in this case, the artist – or artists. Jessica Voorsanger is an artist who has consistently explored popular culture, and particularly our fascination with celebrities. She has often focused upon the special relationship between fans and celebrities and her early work dwelt on her own teenage obsession with David Cassidy and the Partridge Family who became the subject of several works. For this exhibition, Jessica was commissioned to create new work. She has chosen to develop a performance installation entitled Stage Struck. The work embraces the contemporary popular cultural phenomenon of karaoke where participants can take the stage and for a few
minutes, become the performer, the centre of attention, the star. Through a series of events throughout the exhibition, visitors will be invited to dress up as their favourite stars, stand on stage and sing their favourite songs. Her installation takes the form of a stage set for karaoke performance, complete with disco lighting, make-up, clothing and wigs. It also features a DVD in which Jessica and friends perform as a range of stars from Sergeant Pepper to Siouxsie Sioux. The staging, lighting and equipment represent a realm of fantasy, the entry onto the stage marking that transition from reality to fantasy, potentially evoking a range of emotions such as excitement, fear, anxiety and joy. Imitation is often a form of adulation from fans and this installation allows this to come into play as well as offering the drama of live performance, parody, humour and celebration. Peter Davies adopts something of the role of the fan in his epic paintings such as The Hip One Hundred and The Hot One Hundred. Lists of artists in order of their success are familiar to us through the popular music charts and Davies’ paintings seem to suggest something of the nostalgia associated with avidly listening to the charts as a child and writing down lists. This is evoked further through the use of bright colours, frequent misspellings and the carefully constructed but far-from-perfectly rendered grid. In Davies’ Hip One Hundred, he lists his favourite artists in order, writing next to each a brief reference point. Just as the musical charts change week by week in response to commercial sales, Davies’ list is likely to change too over time. The paintings seem to suggest both an obsession with those in the public eye and also a certain fickleness regarding who is in and out of favour at any given time. Candice Breitz is renowned for her elaborate video and sound installations which draw on the content and language of popular culture and the ways in which it permeates our consciousness. Diorama, originally created in 2002, draws on the popular TV programme and global phenomenon Dallas. The programme was broadcast all over the world and households everywhere were familiar with its main characters. In Diorama, Candice Breitz takes nine of the main characters from the show and presents them, each within a different monitor, within a living room and bedroom, complete with carpets, furniture and fittings. Breitz has undertaken a rigorous process of editing so that each character constantly repeats a set of repetitive soundbites such as “Marry me” from Bobby and “I don’t want a drunk for a wife” for JR. Released from the context of narrative, they are each engaged in an endless cacophony of meaningless babble and their repeated gestures appear like a kind of strange staccato dance. The monitors seem to contain the characters like cased museum displays. They appear as a tableau containing relics from the past, historical cultural icons preserved not in formaldehyde but in the ether of technology within a media-saturated world.
Francesco Vezzoli is an artist renowned for his engagement with the world of celebrities. He works in a variety of media including video, live performance and embroidery to create works, often on an epic scale, that explore the mechanics of fame and publicity and the language of cultural forms. In his seminal work, Trailer for the Remake of Gore Vidal’s ‘Caligula’, Vezzoli presents an impressively star-studded mock-trailer for an imaginary re-make of the controversial 1979 cult classic Caligula. Members of the original cast such as Helen Mirren and Adriana Asti appear alongside stars such as Milla Jojovic, Benicio del Toro and Courtney Love. Even the togas were designed by Donatella Versace. The abundance of stars, the high quality production values and the familiar language of the Hollywood film trailer with its distinctive voice-over create a humorous parody of the vacuousness of Hollywood. Alison Jackson creates images that engage directly with the world of celebrities and the photographic language used across the media to relay their images into our households. Her photographs and films seem to offer evidence of celebrities engaged in private and intimate activities. All is not as it seems however. Jackson employs celebrity look-alikes who are then photographed in various scenarios created by the artist. The aesthetic employed, using jaunty camera angles, irregular compositions and a lack of sharp focus, cleverly ape the kind of photographs shot by hidden cameras or snatched by the paparazzi. Reality and fantasy come crashing together in these wonderfully compelling images. Whilst once upon a time, the camera could apparently never lie, we now live in an age where digital manipulation is standard and spots, blemishes and excess curves are airbrushed away. We can no longer trust the integrity of an image. Ironically, in Jackson’s case, except for some magic from hair, make-up and wardrobe, and the use of clever camera-work, her photographs remain authentic and untouched. Jackson draws on our obsession with celebrity and takes us through the superficiality to a darker side. She cleverly draws on what we know about these celebrities and takes us to a realm of possibility beyond that. It is not quite true but it could be… Deborah Robinson Senior Exhibitions Curator A publication is available with essays by Paul Wombell and Deborah Robinson priced £12.00.
Events In Conversation: Alison Jackson
Saturday 26 April, 2pm
Jessica Voorsanger Saturday 10 May, 2pm
Places are limited so please reserve you free place in advance by calling 01922 654400 or by visiting the Reception desk.
Karaoke events Join Jessica Voorsanger for some karaoke fun; dress up as one of the selected pop stars and sing us a song! All welcome to attend and get involved. Saturday 7 June, 2.30pm
Further information For more information about the artists in the exhibition, please visit the Art Library on the Mezzanine Level.