Lazarides Gallery Shows Ben Turnbull’s 'U.S. vs THEM'

Thursday, 21 December 2006 10:02

LONDON - U.S. vs THEM , is Ben Turnbull’s first exhibition at the Lazarides Gallery, and presents a group of 15 provocative, politically committed and striking new sculptures that reveal the dark side of U.S. society and its political system, in the year that the American Presidential election race heats-up.  The exhibition presents familiar symbols of religion, sacrifice, patriotism and propaganda and subverts and exposes their brainwashing effect by re-making them from accumulated flea-market toys, or re-packaging them as huge games, all branded in the iconic red, white and blue of the Stars and Stripes.

Homecoming (2006), presents a coffin draped in the American Flag, and calls on us to glorify a soldier’s sacrifice.  The effect is very different when we realize it is made from the damaged body parts of over 100 ‘Action Men’.  The Flag’s demand for patriotism is mocked in America (Free) (2005), a giant ‘rubiks’ cube that displays the broken image of the Flag.  Three unmarked white crosses point to organized religion’s claim to commemorate the dead, but Memorial (2006), made from the bodies of 1,500 toy soldiers reveals our ultimate irrelevance in the eyes of Church and State.  Fix (2005), repeats this symbol of sacrifice, and remakes it as a giant unsolvable puzzle.  A second group of works comment on the violence and paranoia created by the gun culture at the core of American life.  In Home of the Brave (2006), the monumental letters U.S.A. are literally made-up of hundreds of toy guns.  In Every Home Should Have One (2006), Turnbull remakes on a monumental scale the familiar image of an emergency alarm, and replaces the bell to call for aid with a self-help toy gun.  The widespread paranoia and fear of other people, fed by media news, is mirrored by the repetition of this motif throughout the show.  On exhibition 19 January to 28 February, 2007.