Bohemia Village Voice

Chapman Bros animal model. Photo: Abigail Riddihough

The great and good of Bohemia showed up in force to the private viewing of Jake and Dinos Chapman’s [pictured below] early work at The Hastings and St. Leonards Museum and Art Gallery on Bohemia Road on the 17th December. Despite the freezing weather and treacherous pavements, an incredible number of stylish citizens came out of the woodwork and I met many new faces and made four extra friends! It is interesting at occasions such as this to see just how many marvellous creative and arty types live in our town. It is a shame so many of them have to work away during the week because we could certainly do with a better ‘street presence’ from these people sometimes.
The exhibition Once Upon a Time in Hastings… runs until the 14th of March 2010 and already seems to be doing a fantastic job of getting some new blood using this wonderful facility. Famed for their graphic and gross model-making especially, this display of work from a slightly more innocent era displays a snowballing skill and evokes the themes which have continued to inspire/plague these artists throughout their illustrious career.

Chapman pig

I was introduced to Dinos Chapman but he didn’t look up for being probed so I came to my own conclusion about their work which for me seems simply to be something like thinking of a worst possible case scenario and then taking it further and further into realms of such ludicrous grotesqueness that the original myth of fear or evil is negated. In an interview with Sean O’Hagan for The Observer back in 2006 the seeds may have been sown for the idea to bring some of this back to Hastings, which is where they spent much of their youth, but whether that be in blame or gratitude is arguable. The teenage Chapmans were no doubt influenced by life in Hastings in the 80’s, where the human contents of psychiatric wards were dumped out on to the streets following cut-backs in the 70’s and where they vividly recall that down a particular train track, that ran right underneath their friend’s house, heads and torsos were routinely found.  This exhibition is certainly worth a view whatever your taste and of course so is the museum itself. We are very lucky to have such a beautiful and fascinating museum that is free to visit and as this private view proves, is a most amenable venue space too.

Chapman Brothers

o Hastings Museum: www.hmag.org.uk  Tel:  451052.