I’ve starting experimenting with making some art objects that were based around sex toys for a while, especially after my long chat with Owen Planchart. Owen ran the 23 Paul Street Stripclub and House of Tease for over a decade. 23 Paul street was considered a fairly progressive strip club with a very sex positive events calendar, including hosting a monthly event with the Scarlett Ladies, a queer feminist sex collective. Owen, now a computational art producer (and thankfully that’s not even a euphemism for an NFT) and I talked a lot about the aesthetics of porn and sex more generally amongst other things, he’s still very much apart of the scene so to speak and he has a lot of interesting opinions and perspectives. We’ve butted heads over the years but I am pleased to see us both mellowing and finding the common ground as we’ve aged.
The idea of having something more tangible than digital images of artists work is an intriguing one. I would like to see how the conversation differs when you have the work in front of you and what can come from this. So I bought some sex toys, a pink vibrator and a blue cock ring, cos ya’ know, pink is for girls and blue is for boys, and I’m going to attempt to make something from them. Ideally I want to create something that highlights the absurdity with which we ignore any porn conversation and how ubiquitous that effect is on our culture.
I have no idea what will happen except I have some specific mediums in mind. Will report back. Obvs.