BIRTHDAY PARTY at 44 Stanley – 1 week to go
Not much can beat lazing around 44 Stanley in Milpark on a schoolday pretending to talk business – the laid back atmosphere is contagious… Make sure to ‘Expose yourself and get intimate’ with NIcola Deane who’s having a sexy BIRTHDAY PARTY EXHIBITION at the Muti Gallery.
NICOLA DEANE
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
14 APRIL TO 5 MAY 2005
THE MUTI GALLERY, 44 STANLEY AVE, MILPARK, …
JOHANNESBURG
Email -gallery
From the artist:
‘I have three major interests in my life: food, sex and art,’ declares artist Nicola Deane. ‘The order of importance is constantly shifting, and they also merge at times.’
Deane’s provocative body of work includes a video piece titled ‘Nicola’s First Orgasm’ in collaboration with Aryan Kaganof, and a live performance, ‘Home Economics’, featuring the artist making chocolate moulds of her labia. Her latest show, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, continues the theme of exposure and intimacy.
The show presents images from her soon-to-be published book Cunt Skin Poems, and includes a collection of intimate digital works installed as light boxes, together with the title work, ‘The Birthday Party’ – a billboard-sized digital image of a Victorian threesome.
Asked about the title work, Deane is characteristically playful. ‘Combining the erotic image of a Victorian threesome with the innocent title “The Birthday Party” challenges social etiquette. The threesome depicts a strange celebration, like a mad hatter’s tea party. It makes sense in some obscure and disturbingly sexy way.’
As a show, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY literally and figuratively sheds light on the intimacies of womanhood – unveiling biological and sexual taboos that are usually kept hidden.
Most of the images are composed from found images and text, including erotic novels and pornography, remixed with Deane’s own text and imagery. Hers is the irreverent and unapologetic voice of a new kind of sexual liberation.
Though startling, even shocking, Deane’s exploration of femaleness and sexuality is playful rather than preachy. She brings an almost-childlike innocence to essentially adult material and the result is refreshingly honest.
‘I merge the primary sexual nature of the little girl with the psycho-sexual preoccupations of the adult woman, who is always searching to reclaim that childhood sexual freedom and “purity”,’ says Deane.
In an act of artistic bravery, Deane casts off the security blanket of political correctness in favour of a more naked statement. This nakedness is what makes her work both beautiful and uneasy.
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