Press Release

Press release
T art exhibition
31/08/11- 09/11/11
Berwick Street, Soho, London.Challenging and provocative, t art is an exhibition exploring the issues surrounding prostitution and the sex industry.
T art brings forward the controversial works of five contemporary artists from Sarah Lucas to Jeff Koons who were willing to hang their morals on the line to mock and imitate the sex industry, allowing us an insight into a secretive world.
The street exhibition, set in and around the streets of Soho where the first ever London brothel was formed takes a stand for the ‘curb crawlers’ and the ‘tarts’ of the London Streets and invites an audience to come and embrace an installation of life-like London ladies of the night.
Marking the dates of Jack the Ripper, the infamous killer of five London prostitutes, we see five pieces of selected work, each one representing another of the murdered. Ben Long’s Poubelle De Jour phone box, full to the brim of tart cards hangs around outside the sex shop of Berwick Street, whilst Shirin Fakhim’s Tehran Prostitutes prop themselves up against the shop door way, just like the real street walkers. Come and see t arts red lights, displaying works by Lucas, Koons and Emin in the shop windows around the heart of London’s sex industry.
An exhibit not to be missed for the over eighteens, a truly provocative and naughty display.

Maquette.

Here is the model i have made to show how to exhibit would look, the last two pieces of work would be shown in shop windows either side of this one with red lighting.

Poster/logo

My final ideas for the logo and poster.

Final decisions

I have to now make some final decision about what, where and when of my exhibition in order for me to then make my model.

• I will display my 5 chosen pieces of work in and around the area of 1 Berwick Road, Soho, a sex shop on the street that hosted Soho's first ever brother. Soho being the centre of London's sex industry.
• I will choose 5 pieces of work because of the 5 prostitutes killed by Jack the Ripper in London in the eighteen hundreds.
• The work will be displayed from 31st of August until the 9th of November, the first and last dates of the Ripper murders.
• I will use red lighting over the work displayed in the window, a reference to the Red Light District.
• I will display the poster in personal service adverts in newspapers/magazines and in phone boxes like that of tart cards as well as in art magazines.
• The show will be an 18+ exhibition as for the explicit adult content.

These are the art pieces i will use and how i will display them...

Ben Long, Poubelle De Jour, 2007.

Ben Long’s practice focuses on British culture and operates predominantly within the public realm to enable diverse audiences to engage with his work.

I plan to display Ben Long's London phone box filled with prostitutes call cards outside of the shop, maybe just slightly down the street. I want the exhibition to be like an installation, maybe stumbled across and not at first realised the work is all art not actual artefacts.

Shirin Fakhim, Tehran Prostitutes.

Fakhim’s sculptures play on the duplicitous perceptions of streetwalkers, highlighting the hypocrisy surrounding the sex industry. Made from found materials, her assemblages are grotesque configurations, exaggerating rough-trade stereotypes of wig-wearing, melon-chested slappers contortedly stuffed into ill-fitting lingerie.

I will display the Tehran Prostitutes on a street curb, like the 'curb crawlers' (prostitutes) in London.

Made in Heaven Suite - Jeff Koons, Tate Modern, London

I plan on displaying Koons's work in the window of the sex shop on Berwick Road with red lighting over the top. This will be an intention to mimic the prostitutes in the windows in the red light district, especially with the piece being sculptural and work will be more effective 3d.

Sarah Lucas, Bitch

I plan to display Bitch in another shop window further down the street, again with red lighting displaying a woman bend over on all fours.

Tracey Emin, Suffer Love



The third fake 'prostitute' displayed in a window with red lighting.

Seduced - Art and sex from antiquity to now.

Seduced explores the representation of sex in art through the ages at the Barbican gallery. Featuring over 300 works spanning 2000 years, it brings together Roman sculptures, Indian manuscripts, Japanese prints, Chinese watercolours, Renaissance and Baroque paintings and 19th century photography with modern and contemporary art.

Seduced presents the work of around 70 artists including Nobuyoshi Araki, Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt van Rijn and Andy Warhol among others. Stimulating the mind and the senses, provocative and compelling, Seduced provides the historical and cultural framework to explore the boundaries of acceptability in art. Seduced is curated by Marina Wallace, Martin Kemp and Joanne Bernstein.

Here are some of the works displayed in the explicit exhibition.

Andy Warhol: Blowjob , 1963, Black and white, silent, 41 minutes at 16 frames per second

After Michelangelo: Fig Leaf for Michelangelo's David, 1857

Unknown Artist: Woman and man with oysters, Album of Japanese watercolours

Jeff Koons: Ilona on Top (Rosa background) 1990. Oil inks on canvas

I can take some inspiration from the exhibition and take ideas about what work to include. Does it work well having work from all ages or will contemporary work took best alongside other contemporary work. i now have to make a decision on which work pieces i am definitely using in my exhibition.

Jack the Ripper

Between August and November 1888, London was the scene of five brutal murders. The killer was dubbed 'Jack the Ripper'. All the women murdered were prostitutes, and all except for one - Elizabeth Stride - were horribly mutilated.

Jack the Ripper had 5 victims, all prostitutes. I have decided to select 5 pieces of work to reflect this, one for each prostitute.

Now i have decided this however it would seem that setting the exhibition in Amsterdam is out of context and would be better off finding somewhere in London and finding the red light district there, or an area with a high level of prostitution being a better location.

The Soho area has been at the heart of London's sex industry for over 200 years. Before the introduction of the Street Offences Act in 1959, prostitutes packed the streets and alleys of Soho and by the early sixties the area was home to nearly a hundred strip clubs

BERWICK STREET hosted the first brothel in Soho in the mid eighteen hundreds. This may be a great place to exhibit my work. This sign was spotted on Berwick Street recently, a sure sign prostitution is still common in the area.

In number 1 Berwick Street there is a sex shop, i have decided to display my work in the window of this shop, alternating 5 pieces of work on February the 14th.

Red light district

A red-light district is a part of an urban area where there is a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, adult theaters, etc. The term originates from the red lights that were used as signs of brothels.

As prostitution is legal in Amsterdam the ladies display themselves in red tinted windows ready for work, as men parade down the street shopping for what they want. The buildings of the Red Light District in Amsterdam are charming, set on cobbled streets and in beautiful buildings.

It maybe that i could display my work like that in the Red Light District. I could use each window as a space for another piece of work, each put in a cabinet behind the red windows, a captured audience already prepared for the naughtiness to be unveiled.

^{Just like this woman displaying herself to the audience i will replace the real women with my collection of old and new art, phallic and pornographic to represent different aspects of prostitution in the Amsterdam streets.}

^{I could invite the audience still by handing out calling cards but when visiting the exhibit they realise that what they will see is art not real prostitutes, although still alongside them on the streets.}

^{It could be that i still keep the prostitutes in each of the window booths, or at least some of them and the work is displayed behind them, just on show in the background so the audience in unknowingly looking at the art.}

^{As for Ben Longs London phone box i could take it out of the London scene and bring it onto the streets of Amsterdam, displaying it on the street near the exhibition full to the brim of its tart cards. Passers by will question why a traditionally English object was displayed out of context and may venture inside to take a look..inviting people who wouldn't usually visit art to take a look at what is being displayed.}

The beautiful cobbled streets of Amsterdam are a perfect location for my exhibition.

^{The work i choose will be displayed in windows like these. i will try to create a model to show this and how the pieces will be displayed.}

Poster idea.

A design that could maybe be used and developed on for the virtual exhibition with the added detail and what, where and when in small print.

Wallpaper*'s own Tart Cards

As i was searching the internet for prostitutes tart cards i came across a project by Wallpaper* that took this idea as a basis for a project. they propositioned hundreds of designers, from students to the famous to come up with their own ideas for tart cards but interpreting type into the designs.

There are 450 cards in total, all witty and punchy but quietly highlighting the issues of human trafficing. A reminder that there is a sinister world behind each card.

Here are some that caught my eye..

I like the use of the double word inside a word and the way this is shown here, i may play with this idea with my tART title.

Here the use of letters to show phallic imagery is very effective, its innocent enough to be seen in public without obvious offensive. This may be something to consider when i am mixing advertising a prostitute with a art show, i have to remember my audience and who it will offend if seen by the wrong eyes. I may try and use type and symbols to create my own imagery for the poster.

Maybe this...

(i)

*

(naughty and innocent)

tART cards

London prostitutes advertise their services and they have become as ubiquitous a symbol of that city as the red telephone boxes in which they are found. Step in to any Central London call box and you can contemplate up to eighty cards inviting you to be tied, teased, spanked or massaged either in luxury apartments, fully-equipped chambers or the privacy of your own hotel room. All this and more is just ‘one minute away’ from the box in which you are standing. Read the cards in the boxes and you get more than just a hint of an alternative London. Some people find the cards offensive, others amusing; for the girls and their customers they are a commercial necessity.

I think the tart cards will be a great way to advertise the art show, displaying them in the same places and basing it on their designs.

I prefer the idea of using the simpler designs without the pornographic imagery, leaving a lot more to the imagination and enabling a lot more wit and humour into the designs. This will leave room to play with the concept and leave a lot more to the imagination.

...

Maybe..

TART

Tarts, slags and jezebells.

As I look at more work the more I seem to be focusing on prostitution and i may keep this as a main theme throughout the exhibition and let the work fall around this idea.

I have found some other names for prostitute, a little more playful which may be good ideas for names for the exhibition.

TRAMP

HUSSY

SLAG

SLUT

TART

WHORE

HOE

WENCH

TROLLOP

BIKE

HOOKER

CALL GIRL

JEZEBELL

HARLOT

FLOOZY

COURTESAN

BIMBO

Some other words associated with prostitution which would be good to use for the exhibition are;

SMUT

BLUE

VULGAR

BLOW

CHEEKY

BUCKET

PEEP SHOW

XXX

DIRT

SLEEZE

PROMISCUOUS

PORN