16/10/2024
It is incumbent upon artists to explore cultural moments and also to reject them. When I began imagining this image, for example, I thought it just was a playful visual quip about messy nights out. Something I’ve been exploring a lot lately. But in retrospect I think there is more to it.
So while I’d love to drop this with a low-risk pithy lol, the truth is that I am deeply stirred by a nostalgia for a (perhaps-half-imagined) time of joy and drunken revelry and mischief. That while I keenly recognise the problems that alcohol can and often does bring (hence the dancing pole on a tray and discarded wedding ring: warning against both misogyny and poor judgment) — at the same time I am dissatisfied by the broader movement I see towards cultural sobriety and risk averseness.
It’s complex, I know. And deeply personal. I respect individual sobriety and abstinence greatly. I know too well the problems that excessI’ve alcohol or drug consumption can bring. But I came of age, literally and creatively and professionally, in a golden time of drinking (and drunken) splendour and generosity and, for me at least, affordability and playfulness. And I miss that world deeply.
All of which is to say that this is still a simple visual quip about getting messy. But that it also comes from somewhere meaningful and unresolved. And I wanted to share that.
✌🏼🥃🪭
