Two of the subjects Peter Lloyd has selected for our Exquisite Corpse papercut project, are ‘online dating’ and ‘sexting’. Now while my life at the easel is exciting and creatively exploratory on diverse subjects, in this game/project there’s the opportunity to be wayward, lively and explicit in ways that I am usually not, and it’s a lot of fun.
The worlds of online dating, chatrooms and sexting are rich pickings for the visual artist. I’ve always enjoyed the ‘big’ subjects, and here we have one of the biggest…sexual desire… fast evolving in tandem with the technologies to express it. The experiences can be enlivening and liberating.
However, alongside the fun and games, the new freedoms have also brought deception and abuse. The cyber-world opens many doors for us, and while peering through them can be stimulating and fun, there is a dark side too. But then I always like the great Hogarth’s work best when he turns his eyes from the polite salons, to the whorehouses, gambling-tables and alleyways where most of the interesting stuff goes on.
Right now Peter Lloyd and I are working out ideas and how to express them through the medium of the papercut. Our creations are separate. When we start to complete and splice them together into hybrid beasts, everything will start to look rather different.
Last year illustration graduate Johann Rohl came to Ty Isaf, and for a month we worked collaboratively on images, commissioned by Sarah Parvin for her forthcoming ‘Curious One’ website.
While that experience was immensely rewarding and undoubtedly prepared the way for the current project, it felt quite different. With this, there’s as yet no expectation of where the papercut ideas might go, giving us the freedom to be playful and a little cocky.
…
Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
Well! What an exciting way to start my New Year visit to the Artlog….I pop in expecting to find some drawing or a painting underway and there is my favourite Clive all a-popping with naughtiness…I love it!! (In our neck of the woods (why does that sound somewhat disreputable?) we miss out that ‘t’ and call it rumpy-pumpy…which always makes it interesting when I meet a neighbour who has a pug called Rumpole. He’ll say things like “Say hello to Shellie, Rumpy” and “Good Rumpy!”. I titter to myself.) But I digress…can’t wait to see the final work that you make together and what a fabulous idea to make a shared exquisite corpse work – true collaboration. Happy New Year, old bean! 🙂
Ha ha! I think I may have startled the horses with this one, as the comments box is a tad empty, save for Artlog stalwarts Phil, Maria and you.
Sometimes I get a mischievous compulsion to tell it as it is, and this project gives licence for that. (Things can get a bit too precious in ‘gallery’ world, so it’s good to have a project to let rip on.)
I laughed out loud when I read about ‘Rumpy’. How do you keep a straight face?
Happy New Year to you, too, dear Shellie, and to Kit. Sending love.
I love those eyebrows joined in the middle over the big noses, and those huge eyes looking sideways, and those thick necks.
These young, and not so young men, manage to look alluring and sexy in spite of, or maybe (at least in part), because of the aura of danger they radiate…
The collaboration is looking great.
Thank you Maria. I’m exploring areas here that are lively and engaging, and while they may not tickle everyone’s fancies, it’s stimulating for me to be finding new subject matter.
Yes, allure is a vaporous thing to try and pin down. But those huge dark eyes turned sideways, the heavy brows , the sensual lips and the powerful necks, are all significant factors in conjuring it.
An exciting way to bring in the new year. I’m enjoying seeing your take on this subject, Clive and Peter, and the images so far are fab; lively and punchy and delightful.
Younger generations are growing up with completely different ways of communicating and meeting each other than I did. It’s fascinating. And I can see that the development of all the unwritten rules that surround traditional methods of communicating… the etiquette… lags behind the new technology. It’s giving rise to all sorts of new ways to meet for dates or for casual sex, but also to all sorts of ways to be rejected, put down, or bullied. You don’t need to have a proper conversation to meet. Some friends who are looking to hook up with people for some fun have an app on their phone that will tell then exactly who is in the neighbourhood and ‘up for it’, and give a photo and thumbnail sketch of that person. ‘Click, click’, and you’re there. No wonder many bars and clubs are feeling the pinch or closing. Going out to meet people may start to feel quaint. But I’m not complaining, in fact I know married couples who met on Grindr. I met my hubby at work in a meeting. I remember the tingle as our hands touched when he passed me an agenda! How square and old fashioned is that!
Ahhh, the tingle of touching hands. Not square and old-fashioned at all, but the way evolution uses chemistry and electrical impulses to connect and pair us. While the game may have been going on for the longest time, the effects always feel so fresh and enticing! Love and desire turn us upside down and shake us until our teeth rattle and our pockets empty! Interesting that the word used to express our physical condition after sexual desire has been slaked, is ‘spent’! Ha ha!