roderick bunter and ben frost
Shortly after the exhibition Colossus, by Roderick Bunter and Ben Frost, opened at the Institute of Modern Art, Bunter was accused of promoting paedophilia with his painting, Never Screw with Lassie's Close-up. A debate ensued in the press. The crusaders who made the accusation also claimed that the painting was not 'real art'. If, as Marshal! Mcluhan once proclaimed, the medium is the message, then according to some, messages are not the domain of 'real art'. Perhaps if the work was hung backwards, it would contain satanic verses. lt was a debate which obviously struck a chord with one particular man who was moved to take action to protect the innocent. With the offending panel of a diptych nearly severed from its mount, a police investigation continues.
I suppose that is the trouble with irony: you run the risk of someone not getting it. But really, isn't that one of the threads of humour's discursive power? Funny that. What is also funny is that all the intent and meaning of Colossus has been reduced to the act of a lone 'vandal' slashing one of Bunter's paintings. Like a 1997 American exhibition titled Scene of the Crime, Colossus 'engages us not only in reconstructing prior actions but also in tracing the play of promiscuously intermingled cultural codes that make reality itself seem suspect'.1 What is held to scrutiny in the offending painting is the interplay of branding, family values and 'purity'. The assailant has aided and abetted the artist, unwittingly compounding a sign of these perplexing times. The artwork duplicitously and ambiguously plays as not only a scene of a crime but a sign of one as well