Blow-up dolls playing with a vibrator and maggots devouring flesh are among the shock images awaiting visitors to this year’s Turner Prize exhibition, unveiled on Tuesday in London.
The two works — by brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman — go on public display at the august Tate Britain museum on Wednesday with a warning to minors about their explicit nature.
Another contender for Britain’s best-known arts prize, Grayson Perry, a cross-dressing potter, also features sex acts, genitals and death — depicted by way of ceramic vases.
The annual Turner exhibition almost always sends chins wagging in the British art world, and fevered debate can be expected in the run-up to December 7, when this year’s winner will be announced.
The Chapmans’ first entry, a reworking of a piece they did nine years ago, is titled Sex and shows figures being picked off by maggots, snails, spiders and rats.
It is accompanied by Death, which depicts what seems to be two blow-up dolls using a vibrator on an inflatable bed. In fact, it’s a bronze cast sculpture, realistically painted.
”The Chapman brothers deliberately set out to make work that provokes a strong reaction,” said Turner curator Katherine Stout.
”Here they’re dealing with things that have been a common thread in their art, sex and death. When you see the sculptures they do invite a strong reaction — but with Death it’s also quite funny. It’s quite absurd.”
Perry’s ceramics deal with such sensitive issues as child abuse.
They include A Tradition of Bitterness, which shows images of two suburban homes alongside the silhouetted figure of a man who has hanged himself and another with an erection who is being beaten by a woman.
Several of his pots include figures of young girls in doll-like dresses.
Perry himself often wears such outfits when he dresses as his alter ego, Claire. One of his elaborately embroidered garments, titled Coming Out Dress, is on display.
Also on this year’s Turner shortlist is Willie Doherty and his video work Re-Run in which a man is seen running across a bridge from two angles and the images are projected on to two facing screens.
The fourth contestant, Anya Gallacio, has created a number of exhibits that will rot over the duration of the exhibition, which lasts until January 18.
She has arranged fresh apples over a bronze cast of a tree in Because Nothing Has Changed, and left 1 600 gerbera flowers behind glass screens to wilt over time. — Sapa-AFP