We’re inviting you to see our new exhibition Agalmatophilia at Darling’s Attic. We reopened our space back in January with the show Fictophilia which featured artworks by an international group of artists and marked the beginning of an evolving installation project within a domestic environment. The term fictophilia has gained popularity in online communities, referring to intense and enduring feelings of love, infatuation, or desire for one or more fictional characters. The artworks showcased in this exhibition shared a common starting point in different forms of literature, including fiction, scientific texts, news articles, and legal documents.

Continuing this conversation the word agalmatophilia, which titles the current show, refers to a paraphilia involving sexual attraction towards statues, dolls, mannequins, and similar figurative objects.

The exhibition focuses on performativity and more specifically on the various roles played by performative objects within the artists’ productions. The installation itself is a collaborative piece, its meaning constantly updated by interactions with the public within the physical space and across the various virtual environments to which it projects itself both intentionally and not.

On 13 October at our private reception we’ll host the performance piece “Man Enough To Be A Woman Or Just A Quick Change Artist?” by Stewart Home, a short live art slide talk piece involving a change of clothes and some talk about the fluid nature of our sexual identities. As a 9 and 10-year old Stewart Home in the early 70s was a huge fan of glitter rock and in particular Marc Bolan and T. Rex. As the appeal among mass audiences of glam androgyny faded in 1974, Home had a new idol in the shape of Bruce Lee. The recently deceased kung fu star’s hypermasculinity was so exaggerated that his heterosexual posturing morphed for many into gay desire. At 14 in the summer of 1976, Home had a new subcultural interest in punk rock and this further complicated his ideas about androgyny and gender identity.