Art meets a snarky pop culture reference in this promotional video for the Gardiner Museum’s Camp Fires exhibition (May 29 – Sept. 1, 2014). Two cute young gentlemen find love over a pottery wheel. This is an homage to Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore’s iconic scene in Ghost, which, we understand, is a reference that throws Community college pottery instructors into a rage. A close approximation of the Righteous Brothers song from that scene plays in the background. The teaser ends with the message “Clay is (so) Gay” and then leaves it to the viewer to figure out exactly what this video is promoting.
The Toronto exhibition explores the concept of “camp” in the work of francophone Canadian artists Léopold L. Foulem, Paul Mathieu and Richard Milette. The museum calls the exhibition “an often sensual encounter of these artists’ powerful body of work, one that addresses subversive ideas about queer identity through clay.” The exhibition is curated by Robin Metcalfe. If you ever wondered what penis bondage would look like on a teapot, this is the place to go. Below is a video of Metcalfe explaining the show in a little more detail.
CFile will run our own coverage of this event next week.
Bill Rodgers is a Contributing Editor at CFile.
Above image: Screenshot of “Clay is (so) Gay” from the Gardiner Museum, Toronto.
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