Pop Porn Repurposed
The gratuitous female nudity of the British tabloids isn’t a subject typically associated with fine art, and that’s partly the point in ‘Actress Slash Model’, Martin Maloney’s new exhibition at Timothy Taylor in London.
Like Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s Soup Cans or the nurse paintings of Richard Prince, Maloney’s pop culture appropriations encourage a re-examination of the familiar, in this case, soft porn depictions of the naked body.
His titillating collages are built on paper using pieces of old and discarded canvases to create striking, oddly abstract patchworks, at once mimicking and deconstructing the original photography on which they’re based.
They beg the question: how far can a figurative image be altered before the essential nature of the form changes? Despite extensive distortions the reconstructed work retains much of the sensuality and feeling of the originals. Cheeky grins, lascivious stares and playful postures are all still there. These women might look like the Frankenstein-esque creations of a mad scientist but they are still clearly women, and they’re still sort of sexy.
