Pleasure is a Weapon

About

Working in a range of media across sculpture, performance and painting, this presentation celebrates the body as a site for pleasure and politics. The exhibition will be punctuated with a public programme of performances, screenings and conversations.

The installation of sound, objects and painted works that make upPleasure is a Weapon probes at feelings and recollections surrounding both immediate and remote sexual intimacy. Green creates an environment in which these feelings are inhabited through the ornamental and physical properties of material. Not only an exercise in re-presenting desire but also an attempt to indulge corporeal pleasures, the space of the exhibition invites a sensual encounter between artist, object and viewer.

By staging an intimate exchange between bodies and things, Pleasure is a Weapon trades in an economy of pleasure. Green’s typically economic use of materials enmeshes with her preoccupation with fetish and form. Simultaneously ephemeral and decadent, the works seemingly revel in the excesses of desire. Such excess is written through with political potential.

The show launches with an evening of music, vocals and movement performed by The Brilliant State, a collaboration between Green and artist Rory Pilgrim.

As part of Grand Union’s extended programme we have co-commissioned a performance by Green and collaborator artist Simon Bayliss (Splash Addict) on the event of Fierce Festival’s 2017 launch party. A soundtrack to accompany the show has also been produced by Simon Bayliss.

A publication will accompany the exhibition with a new essay by Laura Guy.