MOCA London presented works by the London and Swedish based artists Cecile Emmanuelle Borra, Roberto Ekholm and Stuart Mayes.
Cecile Emmanuelle Borra's work explores female desire and the increasing commercialization of the male body through a colourful assemblage of fashion, beauty and home-ware accessories, magazine cutouts and trophy paraphernalia combined with images of male genitalia and phallic mock-ups. A characteristic feature of all her work, Borra creates visual ambiguities to seduce the viewer and subsequently challenge traditional expectations surrounding the representation of the male body. What appear to be pretty, multi-coloured floral ornaments set in a landscape of necklaces, plastic combs and Creole earrings reveal themselves as decoratively arranged images of penises.
Roberto Ekholm investigates architectural space and myth making as in his sauna installation, Where the men metspecially built for Supermarket. Visitors were able to enjoy a steam sauna during the art fair, making Kulturhuset a place to look at art and a place to physically enjoy and get invigorated by it. Ekholm's work dissects and re-appropriates the relation between health, myths and identities. He reassembles stories and facts (often with humour) through found objects, drawings, photos and sculptures. His work questions our relation to history and explores the idea of utopia or the function of belief systems. The performative act is inherent in Ekholm's work, whether as photographs, objects, architectural spaces or through performances.
Stuart Mayes re-installed Play, an interactive 'video' installation made up entirely of used VHS video tape taken from disused gay pornographic videos. Mayes made a huge, minimal 'wall' at the Kulturhuset that bisected one of the entrances. Viewers entered or passed through the space by penetrating the wall of free flowing tape. VHS tape is no longer the cutting edge of entertainment technology (surpassed by DVDs, Blue Ray and downloading or even live web streaming) and like old records is now past its sell by date, opening itself up to new meanings and interpretations as well as being treated as physical material from which other things might be made. Mayes's practice consists of sculptures and site-specific projects. Using both new and second-hand found objects as raw materials he draws attention to their particular social and cultural significance. By changing their structures or shifting their functions the viewers were encouraged to reflect on their own experience of similar things.
The Supermarket project was curated by Roberto Ekholm.