“I’ve held on to my virginity for 19 years, and I’m not throwing it away lightly,” he said in a statement. “Basically it’s like I am losing the stigma around virginity.”
The story went around the world, religious groups spoke out about how the stunt cheapened sex, another art student came forward to claim the idea was originally his, and 10,000 people applied for tickets to the show. In the days leading up to the performance of Art School Stole My Virginity, one American site even published a guide to “losing your anal virginity with aplomb”.
In the event the religious groups needn’t have worried...
I spoke to Pettet afterwards in a room of his paintings which will be exhibited in the space for the next couple of days - sexualised tribal images with further slogans, like “when I was 13 I was desperate to be groomed” - where he claimed the piece was a response to the media’s reaction to his original idea. “I told one journalist I was going to lose my virginity, and he assumed it would be me being penetrated. That was interesting; I wanted to play with that.”
It feels a bit early in Pettet's career to make critics’ reactions the focus of his work, and the moments when the media were explicitly referenced (as in monsters labelled “Daily Mail” in his paintings) were the most cringe-inducing. Still, with this stunt he got our attention and apparently his next show - on the theme of touch - will tour several European galleries later in the year. It will be interesting to see how he follows this up.
Well done Clayton.
That's if what you're saying above is true.
That's if what you're saying above is true.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment