Edward Kay
Working Mum
2 July – 7 August 2010
For his first solo exhibition in a not for profit space in the United Kingdom, Edward Kay will present a new series of pencil drawings.
Working Mum is a series of 21 pencil drawings of single breasts based largely on images sourced from popular Lads mags. In each drawing the artist has closely cropped and framed the image to emphasise recurring motifs within the drawings, suggesting a process of special selection has been operational in their collection and uncanny re-presentation in a visual survey. This recent series comes out of an earlier body of work Recession Tits which the artist began making at the beginning of the financial crisis in order to make fast moving, reassuring and saleable work that would target the young heterosexual male collector. This gave rise to the present series in which the breast is made repeatedly singular with focus and attention on the variation of nipple, the style of each breast and the hair extensions so ubiquitous in popular imagery of women. Whereas Recession Tits was in some senses cynical and comic, Working Mum explores a more subtle and intense complex of ideas about personal capital and commodification by phallicising and re-grouping the breast, directing our attention to how powerful it is as a psychological and social signpost.
Edward Kay (Born 1980) graduated from The Royal Academy in 2005. He has been included in a number of exhibitions including HOTEL, London: Dicksmith Gallery, London; Light&Sie Gallery, Dallas; Engholm Engelhorn Galerie, Vienna; Chung King Project, Los Angeles and Bloomberg Space, London.
Supported by Carl and Katharine Kostyal and Fletcher Gallery Services