Captial Vice, is a solo exhibition of my work running 22 September-26 November 2022 at ABC-Arte, Genoa, Italy.
The works in the exhibition were all made on a 3-month residency at ceramic specialists Studio Ernan Design in Albisola, Italy, earlier in 2022. The residency was supported by ABC Arte & Ciaccia Levi Gallery. The exhibition is curated by Luca Bochicchio. There will also be a catalogue in tandem with the show with text contributions by Luca and Turin based curator Caterina Avataneo.
During my time on residency producing the work for this show, I was thinking about the particulars of Genoa, its architecture, and it's history. I wanted to use a deep bloody, cardinal red as a recurrent thread throughout the work- conjuring the associations it has to associations to power, wealth, sensuality, passion, blood, and rage. The title Capital Vice is a play on the ‘Seven deadly sins’ (also named ‘the capital vices’).I wanted to create a sleazy double entendre, alluding the so called ‘sins’ and also to the vices of capital- capitalism.
Installation views of 'Capital Vice' 2022
Figure of vice 1 (Scorpion heart - passion scar), 2022, glazed ceramic & Greed's vision, 2022, glazed ceramic
Figure of vice 2 (Transformations of rage), 2022 glazed ceramic
I have treated the 4 rooms at ABC-Arte as camp, psychosexual chambers, inhabited by 3 ceramic female/femme gorgonesque figureheads, grotesque mirrors, shoes stepping on coins and shit and sensuous vases. I was envisaging the 3 figure heads acting as a trio of flawed/monstrous alter ego’s to ship figureheads on fictional mercantile vessels from the old port of Genoa. Conceiving them as monstrous figurations of rage and the evils or exploitations of trade. This is both a slightly tongue in cheek/hammer horror approach to the idea of the monstrous and a serious relation to it. The underbelly of the beast of the monument - to greed, exploitation, disgust - ‘an anti-capital’ - a capital vice.
Smears of the night, 2022, glazed ceramic mirror with roses in foreground
Scorpion heart vase, 2022 glazed ceramic with roses and Vice Goblets
Vice's hand mirror, 2022 glazed ceramic
