A retrospective and installation featuring photomontage artworks and Glomesh articles.
Intricate photomontage utilising images and text hand cut from newspapers and magazines depicts the adventures of Madam L’Ashby, Glomesh collector.
The exhibition draws on the absurdist tradition of Dada-ism by using scissors and glue rather than Photoshop or brushes and paints to express views of modern life through images presented by the mass media. The work is a subversive and humourous political and social critique of contemporary news and the cult of celebrity, typified by royals, models, actors and pop stars like Lady Gaga.
A recurring motif throughout the work references Glomesh – the iconic Australian metal mesh produced in golds and silvers to make glamourous handbags, purses, clutches, cigarette holders, lighters, make up compacts and so on, produced by Glomesh International in its St Peters factory in Sydney in the 1960s and 1970s.
Also in Dada tradition, L’Ashby has created a series of Glomesh ‘ready-mades’, glamourising everyday objects into lifestyle pieces for every lover of the mesh.
Throne playfully references Marcel Duchamps’ Fountain, a porcelain urinal signed with the pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’, which shocked the art world in 1917 and is now one of the most recognisable modernist works of sculpture. L’Ashby looks forward to a world filled with more ‘glamourist’ ready-mades.
Download the from Dada to Gaga press release.
Download the interview with Marrickville Art Post.