Clayton Pettet: Hoax Of The Day

What art school show could have lived up to the hype generated by Clayton Pettet ahead of his first exhibition in London? This is the student who announced last year that he would have gay sex for the first time in front of 150 invited audience members in an attempt to “stimulate interesting debate and questions regarding the subject”.

“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.

Telegraph. 

Well done Clayton.

That's if what you're saying above is true.

x

PS How the scooptastic Daily Mail covered this originally. 

Clayton Pettet: "It's Just Got Bigger And Bigger"

“I didn’t set out to shock,” Pettet protests. “My virginity wasn’t in any sense a gimmick. I’ve been developing this idea for a while. I thought, ‘Well, this might get a little bit of press in London closer to the event.’ But not this.”

He talks earnestly with enthusiasm and at galloping speed. “It’s just got bigger and bigger. They’ve invented quotes from me. They’ve said my parents didn’t know. They’ve said I expect rave reviews, that I would have a Q&A session after the event and that I’m a teenage narcissist. It’s absurd! Crazy!”

For a moment he looks despairing. “And no one even knows exactly what’s going to happen in this performance.” Even he isn’t sure. “I’m still developing the idea.”

Like any self-respecting conceptual artist, Pettet at least sees the potential in negative publicity: “I’m going to use the press and the assumptions made as part of the piece and the exhibition. In some ways it’s quite useful to make my point.”

The Evening Standard actually bothers to talk to Clayton Pettet - the art school kid that everyone else just regurgitated fictions about him staging a "live gay sex show".

Something of a mediaballs studies masterclass.