Dead Scary exhibition alive with possibilities

Inside Lust For Life Tattoo Gallery

A spooky presence filled the air last night, as crowds gathered at Lust For Life Tattoo Gallery’s ‘Dead Scary’ exhibition. Located in an emerging artists’ hub, Fortitude Valley, Lust For Life functions as a tattoo parlour upstairs, an espresso bar downstairs and a commercial gallery on the floor. 

‘Dead Scary’ is the first group show the gallery’s held since its opening in November 2011. Featuring a deadly selection of Vampire photos, sinister faces, small creatures’ bones, mystical etching prints and images of sad cemeteries, the exhibition is sure to be a frightful experience in honour of the American tradition of Halloween.

Halloween as we know it today can be traced back to ancient Irish and Scottish harvesting traditions that were brought by Europeans when settling in America some centuries ago. It was believed that October 31^st was a time when the boundaries between the spirit world and ours collided. Now the holiday is embraced with trick-or-treating, the decoration of houses with jack-o-lanterns, and ghoul-like imagery haunts the world of retail. Well, Dead Scary certainly lives up to this expectation, with skulls and cobweb decoration to be encountered upon entry, eerie music emanating throughout the space and an old black and white horror film projected on to the wall above the entrance.

Among the exhibiting artists are Belinda Sinclair and Grant Bates. Although both have quite different styles, it has become clear in my mind that their work, among others, has close connection with popular culture imagery, specifically popular movie and television shows like Astro Boy, Harry Potter and the Twilight Saga. The current Postmodern theme of Globalism seems to be at play here- that is, a dissemination of images and information across the world thanks to our rapidly growing information age mobilising social media, the Internet, film and television.

The collective artworks in the exhibition seem to transcend boundaries between what we know and what we don’t, resulting in uncanny imagery imbued with mystery and hints of magic.

Belinda Sinclair: 'Deviant Seeds'

Belinda Sinclair explores the mystical and ritualistic in her artwork. One of her etching prints on display as part of her series ‘Deviant Seeds’ depicts a young boy, strangely robotic in his manner, looking in delight at his skeleton hands while forces are at play in pastel blues and oranges behind him. This subtle, lovely print seems to speak about the spiritual nature of the human being, and the human's role within a wacky and wonderful world full of mystery and unexplained events. Or is it questioning? Is it suggesting that robots will become like humans or vice versa? That technology will become who we are?

To a tacky extent, the photos of bloody vampires (an entry by another artist) is overdone: Within the last five years the world has been bombarded with gory Vampire imagery on the strength of the soaring success of the Twilight saga, and many authors and producers trying to reach the same level of exposure with similar Vampire fiction books and films. This particular work, using a stale idea, didn`t really have the possibly expected power to repel or fascinate which its producer might have designed.

Harry Potter fans look out for Grant Bates’ work 'Infected' with its disturbing Dementor- like sucking out of the pictured people’s inner facial features: veins, bones and all. All in the spirit of ghostly mayhem!

Amidst the creepiness of it all, it was heartening to see that these pop culture elements made their way in to all the works, giving one something familiar to grasp when wandering about through this mist of oddities.

Sarah Hickey: 'Tabernacle of Skin', 2012

From a curatorial perspective, the operation of Lust For Life as a tattoo parlour simultaneously with the gallery means that on some level, the two must relate in their thematic approach to practice. Following on from the Viva La Femme exhibition back in May, for example, consisting of paintings of tattooed women by Sarah Hickey, it appears that the gothic style of the tattoo artist in Lust For Life flows into the artistic motifs of the gallery’s exhibiting artists.

A gathering together of artists exploring gothic imagery in their art is perhaps purposefully well- timed, with the fashionable emergence of this cult-scene within popular culture. Attracting tattoo and piercings-ridden people to the opening, Dead Scary succeeded in setting the scene for an Australian take on this deadly holiday. So, come on over to the dark side and take a peek…only if you dare! Dead Scary finishes at the end of October.

Get information about wicked upcoming events at Lust For Life Gallery here:

http://lustforlifetattoo.com/ 

Images:

• Inside Lust For Life Tattoo Gallery
• Belinda Sinclair: 'Deviant Seeds'
• Sarah Hickey: 'Tabernacle of Skin', 2012

Now tatts a diverse menu, n.d., image, viewed 4 October 2012,

<http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/now-tatts-a-diverse-menu-20111208-1ol18.html>

Event: Dead Scary, n.d., image, viewed 4 October 2012,

<http://everguide.com.au/brisbane/event/2012-oct-04/dead-scary-exhibition-artist-callout/>

Tabernacle of Skin, n.d., image, viewed 5 October 2012,

<http://www.sarahhickey.com.au/exhibitions/>