The Impossible World of Stu Mead

Sat 12th September - Sat 3rd OctoberMon - Sat 12pm - 6pm Artist Reception Fri 11th September 7:30pm At first sight Stu Mead's paintings and drawings exude a naïve and syrupy quality, they seem caught within a playful 50's era of innocence that dissimulates a deeper and darker underlying obsession with the 'Lolita' sexuality. Throughout this comprehensive exhibition Mead explores a fantasy, fairytale-like eroticised world inhabited by archetypal dream-nymphets that appear consumed and guided by heady girlhood mythology. Inquisitive and forthright these fetishized girl-children remain immaculate within Mead's vast catalogue of perversions and subversions and appear to possess an impossible power over the natural world and both its visible and hidden forces. In an art context these preoccupations have an established historical tradition within which Mead is clearly positioned. Artists such as French recluse Balthus, outsider artist Henri Darger, in particular his 'realms of the unreal' and Morton Bartlett's perceptive statues of impish children resonate strongly in Mead's work. Mead's narrative undoubtedly reels precariously between the outer extremities of taboo and the immoral, but is persistently saved from that looming abyss by a sense of comedy and a touching sensitivity in its execution. This strange juxtaposition of a bubblegum innocent style that often depicts highly explicit content raises difficult yet important questions that surround taboo, censorship and the elastic moral sphere within which representation awkwardly sits. Stu Mead was born in 1955 and earned a B.F.A from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has garnered a wide cult following in the underground art community, exhibiting his paintings in galleries across the world for over twenty years, and currently residing in Berlin, Germany. His work was featured extensively in the legendary book "Apocalypse Culture 2", published by Feral House in 2000 and the infamous French publisher, Le Dernier Cri, have release several books of his artwork over the years. BUY STU MEAD PRINTS HERE _________________________________ The Impossible World of Stu Mead KINO Friday 2nd October Doors 7:30pm £5 Stu Mead animated short + Anna Krimmerman video: 'My Daddy He Treats Me So Well' Don't Deliver Us From Evil (1970) Director: Joël Séria Anne and Lore, neighbors and best friends, barely into their teens, board at a convent school where they have taken a vow to sin and to serve Satan. Anne keeps a secret diary, they read a salacious novel, they get a classmate in trouble, they spy on the nuns, they set aside their communion wafers; they make a pact of devotion. Summer vacation starts: Anne's parents leave her alone with the servants for two months at the family château. She and Lore are free to make mischief. They are cruel as well and play games of seduction. As summer ends and fall term begins, things come to a head.