You’re going to leave Elizabeth Prentis’s show with sticky feet. And a sticky mind too, if you’re not careful.
A bubbling tub of pink Nesquik foams and bubbles onto the blue carpet as giant alien broccoli sculptures loom over it, threatening to dip their fronds into the pink froth. An industrial-strength sex swing stands in the background, a black harness latched onto a mechanic’s hoist. The one painting in the room shows pasty white legs spread wide, being invaded by stalks of broccoli. There’s a karaoke machine there too, and a keyboard, all of it begging to be played with.
Obviously, this is super-bodily, hyper-sexual stuff. The room is hot, it stinks of sweetness, it’s oppressively bright and grossly tacky. The whole thing feels like a heady, hilarious plunge into sensuality. There are ideas about power here, submission and control, like a broccoli monster is going to slither its way up your bits and strap you into the sex swing. But more than anything it feels like someone just saying ‘fuck it, let’s go’, and that’s pretty liberating.
This is brilliantly messy, gungy, sticky, sexy art. The world around us is a terrifying shambles of politics, war and terrorism, and maybe Prentis’s revolting, light-hearted, kinky art is the perfect antidote.
