Meat Show at the Medicine Agency

Friday, October 15th, at the Medicine Agency I'm going to be showing new work for a meat themed art show. A theme show is a fun way for me to make art that I might not have made otherwise. It gets me out of my usual train of thought and a like a school assignment, I have to think about art coming from particular perspective. In this instance, the show is about all things meat; livestock, meat products, the industry and culture surrounding meat.

For this series I chose a number of images focusing on a sort of self referencing physical manifestation of the male ego, considering the origin of one species (human), to dominate the other (cattle) with totality and arrogance. These works depict cowboy crotches with a male egocentric phrase accompanying each crotch. The paintings are of "meat", like the slang for a male falis, and it's also a cowboy or rancher raising cattle. By not giving the men faces, it focuses more on the stereotype of what it means to act from a place of manhood, rather than an individual thought or action from a person with a unique life experience. I wanted to explore this idea because so many of the larger manufacturing and corporate entities are run by men. I see this need for domination without regard to others a more male attribute, and one that is very relevant at this time in our environment history.

There is also an attraction and humor in these works that plays with our relationship to the absurdity of this type of egotist behaviour. Is it really a problem or do we care if it is? Are some people more likely to celebrate this than they would be to show concern? Or even, is it just human nature and therefore something to embrace? Well, I haven't any answers yet, only more questions, but if you get a chance to look at the work maybe you can find some of your own answers and fill me in.