Spittle
This tiny book is made from Gray’s original one_and_a quarter inch colour contact sheets. The size makes it easy to lose, which is what happened to my first copy. Each one contains different photos but they all invoke a feeling of being shut up in Disneyland after dark with a bunch of strangers who are all on heavy mind altering drugs. In many of the shots, tiny figures are subsumed by a strangely lit landscape. Gray consistently queries our sense of cultural iconography. Santa pisses on a curtain, Batman drools, stiffly posed characters wear costumes (Tinman, Alice, Betty Rubble) and look out at us as if we’ve just caught them masturbating. The most disturbing shot for me is a naked man in his bedroom with his arm around an ET blow_up doll. Perhaps part of the strangeness these images invoke, is that they are meant to be blown up as huge prints. Making a book from the contacts is a great idea and provides an alternative viewing space, a palm gallery. Gray is pretty hot in the art world right now, and is currently exhibiting a show in New York with Cindy Sherman and Lucian Freud. Get ’em while they’re hot. (AB)
Photos, $10, Matt Gray, Intrepid Tourist Press, PO Box 403, Union Bay, BC, V0R 3B0