LE GUN ‘The Family’ exhibition took place yesterday where the Issue 4 of their annual art annual was introduced to us eager beavers. We hot footed it down to get a glimpse of what was moving and shaking in LE GUN land.
Their website introduced the show with, ‘Dear patrons, please charge your glasses and drink heartily for tomorrow you may die’. This perfectly encapsulates the dark, twisted, gin drinking world of the collective. Legunddon, was one of my favourite pieces which spanned a wall full of loose women, cream cakes and gin.
Murky streets, tired, drained men in bars whose floors swill into oceans inhabited by whales-yes this is all a bit surreal. I couldn’t help but feel I needed a swig of gin to better get into the mindset of these warped individuals (‘warped’ said in a good way!)
There was even a cardboard room where everything (yes everything) was made of cardboard-from the mantelpiece to the welcome mat! It felt like you were sitting on a set of another realm of reality, or possibly a scene from one of Michel Gondrey’s surreal films!
charles reclining on a cardboard sofa
Amongst the multitude of tiny scenes illustrated in works hanging on the wall, I spotted James Unsworth’s work (he was featured in issue 8 of amelia’s mag). Melted faces and monsters chuffing on cigarettes-yes I had certainly entered another dimension.
The feel of the exhibition is satirical, certainly dark yet with a sense of fun. Intricate illustrations with a keen eye on detail adorned the gallery. However the unnerving feeling that around the corner was the unexpected kept creeping in my mind. Le Gun’s collaborators have perhaps drunk too much gin, but it’s not a bad thing where this results in poking fun at reality; subverting it to a new form-where smoking rabbits, monsters, and 1950s dressed women walking leopards rule.
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