The chalkboard cladding the walls of The Tote, a cavernous Mecca to Rock in Melbourne’s inner city suburb of Collingwood, advertised a one-night-only extravaganza of art, music and performance, Starf*ckers, arterarti and rockpigs. Sydney all-girl group The Kingpins headlined with support from local acts Gossip Pop (brother-sister duo Sue and Phil Dodd) and Red Knight Night (Christian Thompson and Chris O’Halloran). The evening promised Melbourne art punters a rare opportunity to get down and dirty with one of Australia’s fastest rising art stars, The Kingpins, in their second ever Melbourne performance. The gig was presented as a live performance, an adjunct to the group’s exhibition Rhapsody Happens at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and was the first reprise of their popular set at Adelaide Artists’ Week earlier in the year.
The Kingpins—Técha Noble, Emma Price, Katie Price and Angelica Mesiti—emerged in 2000 from the Sydney artist collective Imperial Slacks, along with other notable alumni Shaun Gladwell and Monika Tichacek. Since then the group has gained an impressive reputation in Australia and overseas. This year alone they have exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius (Lithuania) and Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw. Prior to this they have also shown at the Taipei Biennial and Gwangju Biennale (both 2003), PS1 in New York and numerous other venues locally and internationally. Rhapsody Happens at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces is the group’s first major solo exhibition in Melbourne and their performance at the Tote provided an opportunity for local audiences to see the performers in action outside the gallery and off the screen.
The Kingpins use video, installation and performance to parody and critique popular culture and