This this monster this things

Group exhibition based on a sculpturally exquisite corpse. Over forty artists construct one body part of the composite sculpture.

Since 2010, Giorgio Sadotti has been assembling ‘THIS THIS MONSTER THIS THINGS’, an exquisite corpse made from objects produced by fifty-one artist friends and acquaintances, most of whom have had an impact on Sadotti’s identity as an artist. This process of gradual accumulation has resulted in a meta-artwork, a bastard object or a curatorial monster that mockingly presents a ‘complete’ entity, a Frankensteinian self-portrait drawn from people who have become familiar with Sadotti and his work over a twenty-five year period.

Within Focal Point Gallery’s project space, the various elements of Sadotti’s figure have been fitted onto a precisely engineered aluminium skeleton to present a character constructed from assorted media, including sculpture, two-dimensional materials such as painting and photography, neon, a rose frozen in a block of ice, and audio-visual body parts. These ‘things’ result in a cacophony, noise or babble that represent the different facets of the artist’s personality, as well as the varied ways of producing and interpreting figurative artworks. Among the remains are Simon Martin’s ‘consciousness’, which comes in the form of a real lemon, Georgina Starr’s ‘brain’ made from bubble-gum and a tarot card, and Paul Noble’s spinning, hallucinogenic and multi-faceted ‘left foot and toes’ hewn from polystyrene and plaster.

Sadotti has also collected many different versions of Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein (1818), the famous story about a monster produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment. Presented on makeshift shelves in the gallery window, the books are offered up in full view of the adjacent library, a display that mirrors the collection of diverse and accumulated literature outside.

Running parallel with this project is a new artist’s book. Published by Focal Point Gallery and designed by Sadotti in collaboration with Fraser Muggeridge studio, its folded cover serves as the invitation for the exhibition, and amalgamates each artist’s name with the name of the fragment of the creature they have created. This synthesis or splicing produces a new phrase, as well as a second artwork or textual Frankenstein’s monster once the artists’ names and body parts have been combined from head to toe on the page.

• Organisation
• https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibition/this-t...