Shaun Doyle & Mally Mallinson - Wash Your Mouth Out

About

Campbell Works is delighted to welcome back Shaun Doyle & Mally Mallinson to present their latest body of work, WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT. As schoolboys Doyle & Mallinson never swore at anyone. They just listened while their contemporaries were scolded by dinner lady's imploring them to rid their mouths of dirty words, in an attempt to implant the idea that a filthy tongue is synonymous with a degenerate mind. It had little effect, as grown up, Doyle and Mallinson take no prisoners. In this new body of work Doyle & Mallinson identify two forms of insults, the kind that should never be tolerated and ones that are useful as they challenge the status quo. Accepting that some insults are never to be tolerated is however not to say that they should never be referred too. The philosopher George Santayana suggests that ‘those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it'. Take this further and ‘those who do not remember the past are doomed to misquote it.' WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT will comprise several distinct works. Large collaged drawings with titles like ‘Our Breakfasts are bigger than your breakfasts‘ and ‘Our shit smells better than your shit' combine seemingly humorous remarks with imagery that points directly back at the viewer, questioning both our reading of these simplistic statements and the artists subversive intentions. A sculpture ‘Our memories are better than your memories' comprises a two headed, Siamese twin sculpture of elephant skulls. Each half having been created separately from memory by the two artists and brought and bound together in the gallery. By challenging each other to a memory duel then unifying the results in a single action, Doyle and Mallinson ask, ‘is it more convincing when two people lend weight to wrongly held convictions?' In a far corner, as if to light the very darkness of their ancestral antecedents, stands ‘Our skins are thicker than your skins', comprising artisan lamps constructed from rawhide dog chews. By fading from living memory, the actions of past generations can become distorted once consigned to the history books, so lest we forget and become completely bloated on junk culture, Doyle & Mallinson are here to save us. These works may not be easy to stomach, but a comic coating allows a deeper reflection on human conditioning, and a reminder that we are all un-equals in a world where ‘My mum is better than yours'.