PRESS RELEASE

The Gone Tomorrow Gallery is opening a new exhibition of work from Simon Brundret on Saturday 5 July 2008, featuring new sculptures and photographs.

Brundret is fascinated with dogs and how the sculptural manipulation of their forms addresses issues of hierarchy, taste and class.

In Brundret’s new sculpture A Long Time Coming, which features a dog humping a plinth, the title refers to the state of the dog being eternally on the way to climax. This also relates to the significant technological advances that Brundret has achieved to create his perpetually humping automaton.

Brundret explains that other people, since seeing his previous kinetic sculptures of dogs performing everyday actions (such as rooting through bins or tail-wagging), have always suggested that he convey, somehow, the ultimate mechanical, automatic action of all:

“In the beginning, everyone who saw my dogs suggested that I make them shag. I’d had the same idea quite a while ago, and I eventually created these two very different sculptures.”

This monster that Brundret has created is a Golem of sorts, cobbled together from everyday, mass-produced (dark) materials, including clay. The mechanism inside is made from old bike parts and builder’s silicone. The addition of a windscreen-wiper motor means that before we face this demon, we hear it. Beating away at a plinth – drumming a monotonous rhythm on his defunct podium.

Two Hounds Copulating is a classical tribute to euphemism, in (faux) marble. Although the sculpture of the canine Adam and Eve hints at a pose of sexual activity, no physical detail confirms that such an act is taking place. It is only the title, almost in denial of what it describes, that references sex. The tail comes to suggest male genitalia, while the actual private parts of the two animals disappear into the shiny undergrowth, which becomes a fig leaf of fur.

In remarkable contrast to A Long Time Coming nearby, it is an almost sentimental alternative conclusion to Brundret’s earlier sculptural journey.

-ENDS-

Notes to Editors:

The Gone Tomorrow Gallery is a not-for-profit space based in London’s East End.

High Res images available. Please contact Maxine Shannon on 07986 350 943 for further details.