DAWN MELLOR – SIRENS
2017-11-20Dawn Mellor presents a new body of paintings, each depicting a British actress portraying a police officer. The title, Sirens, is a triple-entendre, evoking the sounds emitted by cop cars, as well as the vernacular term for a sexually provocative actress and the deadly seductresses of Greek mythology. These paintings are not tributes to the mystical star-power of their celebrity subjects: instead, they highlight the dangers of our lustful projections onto the famous, sounding a loud, dissonant and potentially violent alarm against the passively cannibalistic consumption of mass media.
Mellor works from pre-existing images – in this case, film and TV stills – but always corrupts or mutilates her referents. Here, her subjects appear submerged in water up to their shoulders, their faces partly shrouded by the likes of colorful netting, floral patterning, and eczema. While perhaps not as outright gruesome as some of the artist’s other work, these pictures nonetheless are powerfully, unsettlingly lurid: they practically seethe with sadistic humor, erotic enticement and malevolence.
Opposite – Unnamed Extra (2), 2016
Exhibition runs through to December 23rd, 2017
team (gallery, inc.)
83 Grand Street
10013 New York
USA
