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Artists The Girls commemorate the Smurfs' 50th birthday with saucy Smurfette self-portraits and London show
Coinciding with the Smurfs’ 50th anniversary this month (23 October 2008), artist duo The Girls have staged a new series of photographic works titled ‘Smurfette’, now on show at Beverley Knowles Fine Art, Notting Hill, until Saturday 1 November 2008.
The works are a characteristically over-the-top collision of excessive female sexuality and popular culture in all its kitschy splendour. One of the artists thickly coats her body in ubiquitous chalky-coloured Smurf-blue, and dons the little creature’s white Phrygian cap – apparently a symbol of liberty in the tumultuous 18th century. Parodying 1970s Readers Wives snapshots and 1940s and ‘50s cheesecake photography, a brazen Smurfette (a bottle blonde bombshell with false, exaggeratedly conical, 1940s breasts and a bizarre pubic wig) enjoys a game of cards in an Alice-in-Wonderlandesque landscape, and a seaside holiday.
The artists, known collectively as ‘The Girls’, are Zoë Sinclair and Andrea Blood, both 32, whose collaboration began twelve years ago at Central Saint Martins. The Girls work consists of surreal, staged, portrait photography, including self-portraiture, and performance pieces.
Themes explored in the show, which focuses on self-portraits from 1996–2008, include Englishness, sibling relationships, childhood, gender, women’s relationship with food, eroticism, and the art of drag. Their work has been compared to Gilbert & George and Cindy Sherman.
Cult periodical Amelia’s Magazine said of the show ‘Colourful and playful with a rumbling of darkness ensures childhood naïvety is undercut by a dramatic and slightly haunted adult perspective. An exhibition which ensures you’ll leave slightly flustered – One not to miss’.
The Girls have previously exhibited in group shows at the National Portrait Gallery, the ICA, The Photographers’ Gallery, and the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. Diva magazine featured them as ‘ones to watch’ for 2008, describing their work as ‘Magical, nostalgic and amusing’. The duo have been published in The Observer, The Guardian and Creative Review.
‘In Bed With The Girls’ is now on until Saturday 1 November 2008, entry is free. The gallery is open Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm. Beverley Knowles Fine Art, 88 Bevington Road, London, W10 5TW. The nearest tube is Ladbroke Grove. Telephone 020 8969 0800. www.beverleyknowles.com
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
About The Girls
The Girls are emerging British artist duo Zoë Sinclair (b.1976) and Andrea Blood (b.1975), who first met at school in Dorset, aged 16. Blood and Sinclair began collaborating in 1996 during their first year at Central Saint Martins, also sharing a Brixton flat, and were soon nicknamed 'The Girls' by the Central Saint Martins photography department. Several years into their partnership, Blood and Sinclair were finishing each others sentences like Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos; wearing matching pink outfits; and winning a string of awards for their surreal, very English work. After a seven year hiatus, the award-winning duo are once again collaborating and are currently working on their first book of self-portraits.
www.thegirls.co.uk
About Beverley Knowles Fine Art
Beverley Knowles Fine Art is the only art gallery in the UK specialising in the work of contemporary British women artists. The gallery is part of the Arts Council Own Art Scheme offering interest free loans on purchases at selected galleries. Beverley Knowles Fine Art is at 88 Bevington Road, London, W10 5TW. The gallery is open Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm. Entry is free. The gallery is on the corner of Portobello Road and Golborne Road, opposite the gastro pub ‘The Fat Badger’. The nearest tube is Ladbroke Grove. Telephone +44 (0)20 8969 0800.
www.beverleyknowles.com
About the Smurfs
The Smurfs are 50 years old on Thursday 23 October 2008. On 23 October 1958 the Smurfs made their first appearance in a story of Johan & Peewit, drawn by Peyo, in ‘Le Journal de Spirou’. Initially the Smurfs were just secondary characters, but they soon became stars in their own right.
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Review of 'Smurfette' by The Girls
It is the 50th anniversary for the Smurfs this October. According to Wikipedia, Smurfette was originally a dull and pedestrian brunette transformed into a blonde temptress by Papa Smurf to mix things up a bit in the village. Smurfette is the ultimate sex symbol and the only female in the series given the task of flirting with the Smurf males. In this sequence by artists The Girls, Smurfette plays a pin-up, a glamour girl, but somehow the implication is that it may be a little later in her career, referenced by the late afternoon sun and tendril-like shadows. What happens to pin-ups when they lose their hetero-normative, stereotyped and co-modified looks? Do they become sex workers, reality TV stars, or simply take lonely beach holidays in the English seaside, ever on the lookout for any attentive admirer…or a new agent?
Everything on The Girls’ Smurfette is fake; from her red nails and eyelashes to her lustrous blonde locks and pneumatic breasts. In contrast, the unadorned curves of the artist actually look very cartoon-like. There is a reference to Reader’s Wives snapshots that permeate cheap pornography magazines. Following this visual trail, who is the photographer?’
Googling ‘Smurfette’ is definitely not work-safe. You’ll be surprised (or you may not be) by the overtly sexualised material, some extremely explicit, written for what seems to be a specialist market of Smurfette fetishists. Does her cartoon status imbue her with license to side-step obligations of carnal respect and the tedium of gaining real-life permission?
Jessica Rabbit may be the standard for two-dimensional internet bomb shells, but Smurfette still holds her own, even after 50 years. © Claire Norman 2008
