Sexus Maleficarum

by Stewart Home & Itziar Bilbao Urrutia

Zoom Private Reception : 12 September 2020, 7-10PM 

Exhibition Continues : 13 September – 13 December 2020

Extended to 12 January 2021 + Screening Porn The Theory (2019) & Bondage As Theme & Technique (2019) @ Darling Pearls & Co Only Fans for Video Art // Subscription is Free, Screening is $40 or $20 each.

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Sexus Maleficarum is an exhibition by Itziar Bilbao Urrutia and Stewart Home. This series of artworks consists of completely made-up rituals with the power to bless or hex our cursed present.

The show includes four new video art pieces as well as photographs, drawings, sculptures and installations either also new or from the artists’ previous productions of historical relevance.

Darling Pearls & Co  presents a digital format exhibition at its home page as well as a physical exhibition which can be visited at the Zoom Private Reception  Saturday (12 September 2020), 7-10 PM, in the presence of the artists or anytime in the next three months by appointment. All visits are virtual at present. To make an appointment simply email darling.pearls.n.co@gmail.com, call +44 (0) 20 3105 7758 keeping in mind it is an ancient phone with a nice ring but no answering machine or message us however else you can get hold of us.

Unholy fluids are the uniting theme in this green and pink trip into the female as Sorceress. She emerges from the surf, half-human, half gin. Her blessings flow generously into the earth. She summons the chthonic demons with her sacred incantation – Rhubarb! Rhubarb! Gin Broth! In the comfort of her Massive Gin Palace. She squats to commune with the river of the Underworld. She kneels in the shadow of her sharp stiletto shoes, for she is both Maenad and Aphrodite.

^{Stewart Home, Charged Witches Broom To Sweep Out Patriarchy, Colonialism & Repression, 2020}

A magic witches’ broom that is charged by the artist to aid you in bringing an end to capitalism and the intersectional oppression associated with the commodity economy. Each broom is unique in that the artist has used different spells and strategies to charge it. An associated film shot entirely on location in Poplar (London) shows how the Japanese practice of Kotodama can be combined with punk minimalism to use spellcraft and cursing to destroy patriarchy. This is the female flip side to the male Magic Art Money Launderer because gender is not real but it is experienced as real because of sexism. If you’re man enough to be a woman then you’re foxy enough to flip your gender at will. The most powerful magicians go beyond male and female and are ultimately non-binary. Destroying masculinity doesn’t just liberate women, it liberates everyone!

The Hanged Woman (Red) and Wild Woman (Red) are two in an occasional series of drawings in ink on hand made paper. Based on themes from her earlier work, but super charged for the #metoo generation. 20 years after the first versions of these female characters, half woman, half hairy beast, her subjects have fought for their body autonomy with red teeth and claws, and won.

^{Stewart Home, Alter The Altar, 2020}

A collection of ritual objects to create focus and assist acts of magic. The elements of air, earth and water beneath the alter combine with the fire a magician can bring to the piece to power up the ritual objects – a book, a plastic phallus, a robot, two tarot packs, two unicorns, two knives – that act as talismans to release the hero within you. If you suspect you are a Starseed then this altar will put you in touch with your past lives in other galaxies. Viewers are also invited to use their psychic powers to move the objects around. If you are able to move the objects on the alter then you definitely need to buy it in order to realise your purpose and fulfil your service on planet earth.

^{Stewart Home, Historic Photos of Terry Taylor, 2020}

26 framed photographs piled against a wall so that the viewer can’t see them properly. Photographs taken by Ida Kar in 1956 showing drug use above Gallery One in Soho, and further images from 1961 of Taylor by Kar taken to be used as promotional material to support publication of Baron’s Court, All Change (Taylor’s book of seances and drug dealing and seemingly the first British novel to mention LSD). The inability of the viewer to see all the images invokes Gustav Metzger’s Historic Photographs. This new work has been assembled from items Home included in his 2006 Arnolfini show in Bristol Hallucination Generation: High Modernism In A Tripped Out World.

Golden Lotus No#2 (2020), Golden Ball, Golden Heel (1998) and Queen Of My Kitchen, (2000) are some  of Itziar Bilbao Urrutia’s early experiments in reimagining the monstrous feminine, a recurrent theme in her practice. The use of cartoon-like female creatures seeks to define a female identity that is both whimsical and perverse, where a semi-human female inhabits Itziar’s world of magical fetishism, made life-like thanks to the photographic media. By appropriating materials traditionally considered the property of high art to render her subjects, her work challenges the boundaries between academicism and profanity.

^{Stewart Home, The Yang In The Yin: Magic Art Money Launderer & Muscle Maximising Ensemble, 2020}

An ensemble of an ironing board, two flat irons and a laundry basket. Art is often bought for the purpose of money laundering but new rules mean that those who buy works valued at £10,000 and over now have to produce ID before the purchase in a bid to prevent this. This work is priced a penny under the price at which ID must be produced and consists of items those with patriarchal attitudes might associate with female domestic drudgery. Here they are magically transformed into art that might assist in the conventionally more masculine pursuit of money laundering and scamming. On top of which they can be deployed as an improvised gym with the flat irons becoming dumbbells and the ironing board an improvised weights bench. Again what might be seen as feminine domestic objects are diverted to male obsessions with body size and muscle gain. The work is a series of unique multiples since each Magic Art Money Launderer features different irons, boards and baskets. An associated film shot entirely on location in Clapton (London) humorously explores the benefits and uses of the Magic Art Money Launderer.

“With The One And The Many I’m foregrounding the role of the market in transforming everyday objects into works of art. Each of the 72 books that make up my sculpture has an individual cover price of £7.99 and thus a total retail value of £575.28. We offer The One And The Many for sale at the bargain basement tag of £383.52, in other words, with the standard shop discount of one third off their retail value. A purchaser of the work might destroy the sculpture by tearing open the plastic wrappings in which the books have been packaged and make an immediate profit by selling them individually for their retail value. On the other hand, a buyer may choose to speculate on the sculpture’s ongoing value as a work of art and preserve it as it is in the belief that in the long term this is the best way of realising the greatest profit from the purchase; or, even, simply because they like it as an aesthetic object. As an artwork The One And The Many is unique, and I will not remake the piece unless someone both buys it and breaks it up with the aim of realising an instant profit.” – Stewart Home