Etiquette
The object reproduced for the invitation of this exhibition, and then painted huge on the wall of the gallery in simplified cartoon-like contours, is an intriguing contraption. Neither stool nor settee, the grace of its gold ormolu and delicate silk upholstery seem at odds with two things that spring like antennae and, below, what look a lot like stirrups. Before I visited Brad Buckley’s installation, Etiquette, I stared at the thing over and over again, and must say, found it pleasantly unfamiliar. Was it some aristocratic conceit? A sculpture perhaps, or some Koonsian mock-Baroque remake? Almost right. It is what was known in French nineteenth century bordellos as a seige d’amour, a ‘love seat’, more properly known in Britain as a ‘rogering chair’, a custom-built device used in brothels that was literally an ornate harness used to keep women in position while clients did their business. Whether you choose to grimace or snigger at this, such images for Buckley are specifically encoded, emblems which are to do with the exchange of power.
Etiquette was chamber red on the outside and densely black within. Before entering, you met a trio of suspended red sheets, like the generic signs of authoritarianism. Around each of the two pylons that divided the space inside were white neon hoops placed just below waist height. The far wall was filled with a text relating some pornographic male fantasy. Part of it read, ‘she knew I had always wanted to fuck her and perhaps tonight was the night. There was only one catch, which was she wanted to piss in my mouth first’. You were abruptly transported into frivolous libertinage. Buckley uses sex as the