‘We’re interested in how, in queer culture, there’s a lot of blurring and questioning about what makes you a saint or a sinner?’
By Patrick Cash
‘Kev and I are both really inspired by pop culture, as well as art history and ancient mythology, so the idea of ‘saints and sinners’ came naturally,’ says artist and curator Sina Sparrow. ‘We’re both interested in saints and sinners from the past, as well as how modern day celebrities are treated as good or evil, turned into icons and glorified, or mocked and hounded. We’re interested in how, in queer culture, there’s a lot of blurring and questioning about what makes you a saint or a sinner?’
Such contemplation on the hues and hubris of modern culture translated last week into a wildly colourful iconography splayed across the white walls of a Camden gallery. Sparrow’s glorious collation of Saints arrests the eye, including a smiling and crying kaleidoscopic Veronica holding a shroud of Jesus-in-thorns, as does Clarke’s depiction of the Virgin Mary and McDonalds fries, or as John Waters’ Divine, with drag makeup amid golden clouds.
Alongside Sparrow and Clarke’s own comic book shrines to queer eye for the renaissance, there were stalls of Boy Crazy Boy graphic pamphlets, hand-sewn toys, plus T-shirt rails with the likes of East End designer Victoria Sin on the racks. And, at the end of the room, a little sign saying: ‘over-18s only in the back room’. Obvs, intrepid reporters that we are, we dived in the deep end.
‘My portraits of dead porn stars are in the exhibition,’ says Sina. ‘Porn stars occupy a really prominent but also a difficult place in gay culture, they’re idolised but often denigrated. There’s this conflict between the fact that they’re thought of as so beautiful and powerful, and envied and loved: but the reality is many porn stars have difficult experiences.
‘They have the same conflicts anyone does and that can be intensified by the kind of work they do and the kind of lifestyle some of them have that involves so much emphasis being put on your body and looking great and being able to perform and all that. So they’re saints and sinners at the same time. And then when you think of traditional Catholic saints, it’s a similar thing. They’re glorified but they often have these awful, horrific stories attached to them.’
In the back room were Sina’s poignant portraits of these great, beautiful dead porn stars, standing proud and erect in splatters of paint, with their age and form of death written in the inscription: ‘Erik Rhodes, 30, cardiac arrest’. But also there were smaller, more intimate black-and-white zine prints of boys in sexual positions, finished with heartbreaking quotes: ‘He knew it probably didn’t mean very much, but he just wanted to feel special to somebody at least for a little while.’
Kev Clarke said of the exhibition: ‘This is an art collective which aims to promote and nurture cross-pollination and collaboration between emerging graphic artists, and illustrators in London and beyond, with an emphasis on artists exploring issues of queer identity, sexuality and/or gender. The group will be called Paradise Factory. The aim of the collective is to create opportunities for queer artists to show work and develop projects together.’
Plus, of course, for people to buy art: personally, I walked out with two pieces under my arm.
• An exhibition curated by Sina Sparrow & Kev Clarke
69 Camden High Street, NW1 7JL
• Other artists involved in the Queer Pop Saints & Sinners exhibition:
Victoria Sin, John Lee Bird, Paul le Chien, Bev Elliot, Ed Firth, D Woodbridge, James Ormistan, Cary Kwok, Kirsty Harris, Michael Gurhy, Michael Turnbull, Joe Pop, Tom Moore.
