VISUAL CULTURE

TRUE LOVE

New works by Michael Petry

1 – 27 October 2006

Westbrook Gallery, 8 Windmill Street, London W1T 2JE, 44.207.580.1151, email

PRESS RELEASE

True Love presents works by Michael Petry at the new Westbrook Gallery. Petry, born in El Paso, Texas has lived and worked in London since 1981 and has shown internationally at Biennales, museums and private galleries. Best know for large-scale multi-media installations (he is a co-founder of London’s Museum of Installation, and co-author of Installation Art, Thames and Hudson), here he presents a new body of intimate, beautiful and very queer works…

Petry, BB60, 2006, glass, silver plate

Lovers: The Bare Back Series forms the main body of work. Each object in the series is made by pouring molten glass into Victorian silver-plated occasional dishes (hot fluid into open receptacles). The extreme heat causes the two materials to fuse into a new object (lovers). Petry is interested in the creation of fine art through the application of craft to mass-produced, bourgeois objects that ape craft. In this case he uses the know-how of technicians at the Royal College of Art to transform silver plated dishes into glass sculptures. The works juxtapose the heterosexual mainstream idea of perfect lovers with the transgressive act of unprotected sex (gay or straight). At an objective level the sculptures are beautiful, abstract, even seductive. But conceptually they deal with danger, transformation and the queer polemic.

Petry, le petit mort II, 2006, 100 meters of leather

The second body of work is from Petry’s Tie A Knot In It series. Each object comprises a repeatedly knotted spool of cord, leather, silver, or 24 carat gold. The form of the knot serves two purposes. On the one hand, the knot represents an ejaculate – in British slang a woman might tell an unwanted suitor, or a mother tell a small male child who has to use the rest room, to ‘tie a knot in it’. On the other hand, the knot represents a puzzle (in this case, the puzzle of coded sexuality) – in ancient western symbolism, knots indicate the power of knowledge, most famously the Gordian Knot that was severed by Alexander the Great. This body of work examines hidden language and develops themes from Petry’s seminal curatorial project Hidden Histories: 20th Century Male Same Sex Lovers in the Visual Arts (and book of the same name, available on request) at the New Art Gallery Walsall. Again each object seduces the viewer in order to communicate more than the visual.

Download Press Release. A full colour catalogue and large-scale (printable) jpegs of all works are available on request on CD rom or by email.

View image galleries for True Love at Westbrook Gallery or Museum Miedzi.

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