The Irresistible Lure of Fatty GingoDominic Allan
13 June – 5 July 2009
Private View: Fri 12 June 6-9pm
Seen the price of a barrel of oil lately? Christ! We might have to do like Fatty Gingo and go on holiday in Britain! Imagine that! The Irresistible Lure of Fatty Gingo (aka Dominic Allan) is a welcome riposte to the (g)local hyperbole being pedalled down the road. Abandon the levity of the Altermodern and ‘plonk – residencies’ in Macedonia. Fatty Gingo, you children of Albion, wants you for a sunbeam.
There’s no doubt that Allan’s work is redolent of the ethical and pragmatic Orwell of My Country Left or Right or The Lion and The Unicorn; a world of rotten teeth, bubble and squeak, and uncommon sense. Sort of Brownish. But hey, in Allan’s hands this is infused with the sparkle of a candyfloss rush together with a valedictory reflection upon the hangover that is Britain’s seaside culture. This is a culture that has always been driven by some substance or other. Sugar; alcohol; smack. How (g)local is that.
Allan’s Our Destination was Lutopia is a visceral work both disgusting and alluring. Constructed from strawberry whips and panel pins, it is an injunction to get horny. Allan’s a dirty fucker actually. Abandoned joggle-eyed bicycles, photographs of rickety piers bereft of human activity, the show is unpopulated, save by the mug shot of a missing child. This metonymic quality – the appeal to something or someone else is an inversion of the escapism and promises, the bright lights that once attracted Britons to the seaside in their droves - slaves we were to shiny metaphor.
In Allan’s work we are confronted with a sugar – (post) octane axis and its effect upon British seaside culture. The saccharine hedonism and distractions of the age before Easyjet, reigned in by British parochialism and compulsory fun. Where the dilapidated Victorian proscenium lives cheek by jowl with the misery of the junky, the migrant worker, and the sans-papier prozzer. In the world of Fatty Gingo, the bisquick faced candyfloss vendor is a kiddie fiddler and there’s jizz on your toffee apple because there’s no minimum wage in Cleethorpski. Happy Holidays!
Robert Grose 2009
Alongside 'The Irresistible Lure of Fatty Gingo' Transition ShopSpace will be showing paintings by Charlie Day. Day's practice revolves around memory, melancholia and music. The skewed perspectives and the materiality of the paint reference process painting juxtaposed with direct figuration. The 'aggressively slack' (Martin Herbert, Time Out) paintings come from a life shaped through the sights and sounds of 1970s and 80s Britain and the uneasy melancholy of his journey through a life of mental illness. He is interested in the multiplicity of mark making and the surreal situations in which the paintings find themselves. His memories of childhood and heroes include Morrissey, Tommy Cooper, Ian Dury, Shelagh Delaney, Morcombe and Wise, John Lennon, Peter Blake, Max Wall, David Bowie, David Hockney, The Two Ronnies, Derek Jarman, Michael Caine, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and the rest.
| Date : | 12 juin 2009 |
| Heure : | 18:00 - 21:00 |
| Lieu : | |
| Adresse : | Unit 25a, Regents Studios, 8 Andrews Road, E8 4QN |
| Téléphone : | 02072544202 |
| Courriel : |
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