PRESS RELEASE
Angels, Sluts & Artists
Banks Mill Studios, 71 Bridge Street Derby DE1 3LB
Monday 5th to Friday 23rd August 2019 (10am to 3pm Mon-Fri)
Launch Party Friday 9th August 7-9.30pm with Live Music from L’a Esperanza
A provocative exhibition from the Butterfly Cry Artist, at Banks Mill Studios, Derby 5th – 23rd August, invites viewers on a SlutWalk, to the crucifixion, via Glasgow.
Neo male-feminist in its social critique, this exhibition is Scottish Artist John McDonald’s response to #metoo, staged within a searching return to the people of his city of birth, Glasgow.
Angels, Sluts & Artists is a physical and theatrical experience with huge paintings, some over 6ft, which tower, lean, and hang like a maze. Stunning, haunting portraiture, often in black and white, exploring themes as diverse as UK child poverty, neo-natal death, divorce, sexuality, ageing, and, as always, the strength of the human spirit.
If you can make your way through John’s Via Dolorosa, or Way of Sorrows, to approach the final scene, there’s an initial sense of immunity: Ah it’s Jesus on a cross. We’re used to that in Art, in churches, in safe places like The National Gallery. The brutality of this ubiquitous image confronts us with a jolt as we realise: This is a woman!
So it’s not necessarily a safe and comfortable show. “It’s not meant to be controversial”, John states, “-but certainly uncompromising. I am not trying to cause offense to anyone, but my own experience prevents me from using nice words for things that are offenses in our society and culture”.
John adds: “For #metoo to be more than a cult of victimhood, men really do need to be engaged in the dialogue”.
In May 2019 Israel’s 8th Annual SlutWalk made UK news with the humorous sight of activists repelling Orthodox men who tried to disrupt the march; the women forced the men to retreat by taking their tops off.
The SlutWalk movement started in 2011 when a senior police officer addressing Toronto Law School on safety, suggested that “Women should avoid dressing like sluts” as a precaution against sexual assault. This provoked a backlash against rape culture, and victim-blaming for sexual violence against women.
Sheri Golan, one of 4 women Tel Aviv nightclub owner Alon Kastiel was convicted for attempting to rape, spoke at this year’s March:
“The first time I came to a SlutWalk and saw thousands of young women shouting ‘even if you didn’t scream, we will scream for you’, I cried.”
This is the context in which John asks us to understand his exhibition title.
Many are uncomfortable with the usefulness of feminist reclamation of the word ‘slut’. It is a derogatory term entrenched in a history of female sexual subordination that might be better relegated from the language. It’s not easy to pinpoint exactly what makes you a ‘slut’ in both contemporary and historical uses. It seems the only hard and fast rule is that you have to be a woman.
As an artist and a man John is trying to do something different with this word. He is applying it to male artists, the art world, and the history of art, which have all played their part in making this sexual subordination appear palatable. Perhaps opening it up to all males, or as John put it: “Maybe I’m the Angel, I’m the Slut, and I’m the Artist”.
John would say he’s not religious, but the form of the cross seems to emerge over and over again: in a portrait of a boy on a washing pole, in a woman lying back on her bed, (who seems to be quite content with her own sexuality), to the more overt cross behind the grieving mother in Mother God. It is no coincidence that the birth of John’s passion for art was seeing Salvador Dali’s painting Christ of St John of the Cross in Kelvingrove, Glasgow, as a child.
John McDonald gained international acclaim for Butterfly Cry a series of paintings introducing a narrative of the transformation of suffering through creative action. The Butterfly Cry series depicts John’s ‘Mexican Heroine’, the beautiful wife of Diego Rivera, and Mexico’s most loved artist. It is a sad twist in the tale that he is no longer allowed to name her, for legal reasons imposed by an international commercial corporation.
John started painting at age 54 when he was profoundly deaf, and is emerging as an artist with a new perspective following a successful cochlear implant, after 18 years without hearing. It is no surprise that his artistic narrative has expanded beyond the need to survive and cope with pain. His second solo exhibition Angels, Sluts & Artists is characterised by a really outward and socially-engaged critique, reflected in a new level of visual detail, more viscerally portrayed.
The Glasgow portraits introduced here are part of a larger collection of paintings, in collaboration with photographer Nick Hedges, and Shelter Scotland. These will each be sponsored, and exhibited in Glasgow, hopefully late 2020, before auction, with all proceeds going to Shelter.
The Launch Party for Angels, Sluts & Artists is on Friday 9th August from 7.00-9.30pm and all are welcome. There will be live music, and refreshments available. Venue address: Banks Mill Studios, 71 Bridge Street, Derby DE1 3LB. On-street parking is available.
Katherine L Jones PR & BSL for the Artist:
Kathyjones10@live.co.uk 07578273062
Contact the Artist:
John McDonald
john@uk4bsl.co.uk
07988901932
Facebook Butterfly Cry Artist www.facebook.com/AGlasgowAffair