Edward Kay
Edward Kay's work features easily recognizable images in an uncanny light. In his series titled Working Mum, Edward Kay draws single breasts in pencil on paper, 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 …
Edward Kay's work features easily recognizable images in an uncanny light. In his series titled Working Mum, Edward Kay draws single breasts in pencil on paper, 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 lives and works in London. Kay graduated with an MA in Painting from the Royal Academy Schools, London in 2005. Recent group exhibitions include: Being and Nothingness, with Kate Atkin, Martin Boyce, Henry Commbes, George Henry Longly, Toby Paterson, and Clare Stephenson, Light&Sie Gallery, Dallas (2009); Surfaced, with Nayland Blake, Royal Acadamy Schools Gallery (2007); and Engholm Engelhorn Galerie, Vienna (2007).
Courtesy of Studio Voltaire