Childish Things
dal 18/11/2010 al 21/1/2011
Segnalato da
Louise Bourgeois
Helen Chadwick
Robert Gober
Susan Hiller
Mike Kelley
Jeff Koons
Paul McCarthy
David Hopkins
18/11/2010
Childish Things
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
Fantasy and Ferocity in Recent Art. The exhibition focuses on a very specific moment in the post-dada/surrealist take-up of toys and early childhood as themes in art. Centred on the work of certain British and American artists who came to prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s, the show sets in dialogue a number of seminal works on the theme of toys, childhood, child development and the cultural conditioning of children. Works by Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick, Robert Gober, Susan Hiller, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy.
Curated by David Hopkins
Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick, Robert Gober, Susan Hiller, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy
This exhibition focuses on a very specific moment in the post-dada/surrealist take-up of toys and early childhood as themes in art. Centred on the work of certain British and American artists who came to prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s, the show sets in dialogue a number of seminal works on the theme of toys, childhood, child development and the cultural conditioning of children.
The exhibition examines the work of a small group of internationally significant artists from America and Britain whose work references toys or playthings, children’s entertainment or child-related objects. It sets up a series of ‘conversations’ between the objects on display in order to explore an interconnected set of themes: Jeff Koons’ celebrations of kiddy-kitsch are set against Mike Kelley’s and Louise Bourgeois’ evocations of more sinister or abusive parent-child relations; Susan Hiller’s anthropologically-inflected exploration of the aggression underpinning the social conditioning of children, as in the Punch and Judy show (An Entertainment) is placed in counterpoint to Paul McCarthy’s monstrous consumerist/sexual hybrids and Robert Gober’s playpen is seen alongside Helen Chadwick’s objects which deal with her early adaptive response to playthings.
The exhibition seeks to look at the art of the 1980s and early 1990s art in a new way. The usual critical contexts informing art of this period (postmodernism, post-conceptualism, identity politics) are de- emphasised, and questions about attitudes to childhood, to play and to social conditioning – understood via post-surrealist fantasy idioms – are brought into prominence. The show aims to be playful – on one level, it possesses something of the ambience of a toy-shop or toy museum, but the emphasis is ultimately on a much ‘darker’ poetics of childhood.
Louise Warmington
Press and Marketing Manager
P 00 44 (0)131 226 8182 F 00 44 (0)131 220 3130 E marketing@fruitmarket.co.uk
Image: Paul McCarthy Children's Anatomical Educational Figure, c. 1990. Fabric, wool; found object.
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zürich
Opening and Curator’s talk Friday 19 November, 6.30pm. Free.
The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF
Mon-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 12-5pm
Festive Closure
closed 24 Dec 2010 – 2 Jan 2011
(inclusive). Normal hours resume
3 January 2011
Admission free