american artist paul mccarthy has spent much of his career critiquing and exploring western society’s obsessions – its mass media, popular culture and icons of its consumer, entertainment and art industries. in reaction to the excesses of consumer capitalism, ‘disneyfied’ banality and misplaced feelings of entitlement, mccarthy has developed a subversive vocabulary that twists, perverts and exaggerates the world around him to a heightened and crazed state.
image © designboom
for the occasion of the 17th biennale of sydney, he has produced a new sculpture, which premiered at pier 2 / 3, walsh bay. entitled ‘ship of fools, ship adrift 2’, 2010, the sculpture is a contemporary rephrasing of the medieval allegory, depicting a world of power without principle as the ship and its denizens hurtle obviously towards their own destruction. constructed from foam, the child like faces of the caricatured inhabitants float dumbly above the ship that sports an implausible gun barrel mounted on its prow.
view of the inplausible gun barrel mounted on the prow of the ship image © designboom
image © designboom
detail of structural components image © designboom
front view of the ship image © designboom
image © designboom
containers of foam image © designboom
side view image © designboom
image © designboom
image © designboom
up close of caricatured faces image © designboom
foam child-like faces hang above image © designboom
image © designboom
image © designboom
image © designboom
up close of the side of the ship image © designboom
image © designboom
image © designboom
the sculpture is set atop a carpeted platform image © designboom
one of the child-like faces of the caricatured inhabitants image © designboom
