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Review Jan 23 2009 « | »
Sweet Toof and Martin Lea Brown Sweet Toof and Martin Lea Brown unleashed some striking new urban inflected work on the capital last night. Street......

Jon Openshaw

Sweet Toof and Martin Lea Brown unleashed some striking new urban inflected work on the capital last night. Street art tramping the hallowed grounds of fine art is nothing new, but this joint show appealed to me a lot more than, say, Banksy's brand of 'wink wink d'you geddit' (yes Banksy, everyone gets it).

RCA graduate and prolific London based graffiti artist Sweet Toof seems to have a bit of an oral fixation. His press release for 'Bonfire of the Vanitas' says it best, so I will quote liberally here: "of all the parts of our body, this area, crammed into the mouth cave, is a constant reminder that we are merely flesh hanging out to dry on an elaborate chain of bone linkages. The pulpy and ripped swollen scarlet and pink flesh that we call gums barely tolerates their border-line function as a visual testament to life and death. The mouth itself is in constant crisis. It is the place where stuttering words come forth, where words are taken back, where 'sweet' foods begin the rot, where a kiss becomes a betrayal. The mouth, like the world, is a warzone".

That may be reading a little too much into anatomy, but the result is a bold and bizarre Mexican day of the dead come Dickensian nightmare of grinning fleshless faces set off by lurid graffiti neons. Drawing heavily on the tradition of northern European momento mori, his paintings are an attack on the sins of the flesh. This has been recontextualised however, and the punches are aimed at the corruptions and greed of contemporary society (rather than the internalised temptations of the individual).

Sweet Toof's work is no more subtle than that of other anti-establishment (ish) urban inspired artists, but it is more visceral, and this somehow redeems it from the morass of smug intellectualism that often characterises the genre. His human subjects are quite literally laid bare in luminous gore, magnified and made grotesque by it. They are also rendered ludicrous, and so in the same way that dias de los muertos celebrations honour life by embracing death, there is something joyful in the way Sweet Toof explores what he deplores.

Martin Lea Brown's collection 'Fool's Gold' covers similar ground in a less cartoonish, and for me slightly less powerful, way. His cinematic Hopperesque landscapes are more pointed reactions to the uncertain times we live in. Bank robbery becomes a unifying thought, and the violence is more explicit (and less implied or seething) than Sweet Toof's. The collection is an anarchistic vision of a world where bankers have become robbers - a timely reflection of the real life fat cats of finance being bailed out of a situation that their own greed created, whilst the lower echelons sink.

Instead of being exposed through being laid bare, as with Sweet Toof's fleshless Cheshire cat grimaces, Martin Lea Brown's subjects are exposed through adding an extra layer - the rubber masks that ostensibly obscure their identity. These masks transform his subjects into grotesque clowns, wolves, skulls and chickens, but rather than being hidden, their true identity is laid bare for all to see. Martin Lea Brown uses disguise to turn the skin inside out and reveal what's lurking underneath.

Both collection compliment each other nicely though, and the exhibition provides a timely response to the changing times. It runs until Feb 4 and you can go here for more information.

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