If you’re worried that romance may be dead, just one look at Lindsey Mendick’s new exhibition will reassure you that it’s very much alive. It’s just a bit damaged and mangled. Well, mangled is an understatement. The English ceramicist paints a portrait of romantic love that’s mutated and twisted, gory and gross. This is love as body horror, romance as drug, co-dependency as living nightmare.
The whole show is inspired by her love for her partner, the artist Guy Oliver, and her little black pug, Telly. Grainy, gritty Polaroids in the opening room find Lindsey and Guy embracing and canoodling, arms wrapped around each other, toes in one another’s mouths, naked bodies writhing together, tongues licking nipples, feet pressed against bare bollocks. It’s an incredibly intimate insight into their relationship, so full-frontal that you feel like a voyeur for looking.
