Über-camp New York-based pop quartet Scissor Sisters have stepped off stage and cast aside their spangly waistcoats to curate ‘Night Work’, which shares the same name as the band’s 2010 album. The late Robert Mapplethorpe’s black-and-white photographs of well-oiled, athletic torsos (as well as those more explicit in nature) dominate both spaces of this group show, inaugurating a second gallery for Alison Jacques on Berners Street. Mapplethorpe’s lesser-known sculptural pieces are equally as striking, however, with geometric star-shaped mirrors and triangular arrows of pillar-box red providing colourful counterpoints to the photos and a recurring motif.
Despite the walk between the space and the array of artists on display, there is a sense of congruity throughout. Oswaldo Macia’s 16mm film ‘Equilibrium’ (2010) is nothing if not a Mapplethorpe in motion: a Lycra-clad acrobat is seen tumbling and writhing between two large swathes of cotton. Similarly, a tactile link to Mapplethorpe’s ‘Bondage’ Polaroids can be found in Marc Swanson’s ‘Untitled (Vertical Shirt and Chains Box)’ (2009), a hanging, fleshy animal-like skin concealed by golden chains.
In the second space, Gillian Wearing’s ‘Me as Robert Mapplethorpe’ (2009) stares ominously and powerfully at the viewer, paying homage to Mapplethorpe’s renowned self-portrait of 1988. Exploring themes of sex and death in equal measure, ‘Night Work’ is an aesthetically pleasing interspersion of photography and sculpture. While the curatorial role of the Scissor Sisters is seemingly irrelevant, Mapplethorpe’s influence on contemporary art is never in doubt.