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EXHIBIT:
A Toronto gallery showcases works based on songs by Judas Priest. The show,
ELECTRIC EYE, a fundraiser for Toronto's Sis Boom Bah gallery, features 49 works
in various media by 49 artists, each of whom was assigned a song by Birmingham's
heavy-metal pioneers.
*CURATORIAL STATEMENT*
Judas Priest rose from the gritty, working-class steel town of
Birmingham, England, and became one of the biggest bands in the world. Judas
Priest are considered the groundbreaking inventors of true Heavy Metal
music." -official Judas Priest website.
49 artists from 5 cities (Montreal, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and London)
come together at sis boom bah to plumb the cultural depths of the inventors
of 'true Heavy Metal'. For this gallery fundraiser, each artist was given a
Judas Priest song, with no two artists sharing a track. They were invited to
create one piece; a visual and conceptual response to their song. These are
not metalheads (at least not most of them). From dozens of albums, spanning
a 30-year career, Judas Priest are an inseparable part of the contemporary
musical landscape. The only band to ever be taken to court for driving
teenagers to suicide, Judas Priest were once considered the devil incarnate.
With powerful musical compositions and stage theatrics, many citizens were
capable of believing they would drive their children to unspeakable horrors.
a dark angel of sin preying deep from within come take me in -from 'A Touch
Of Evil' 1990
The falsetto shrieks of Rob Halford, once defining working class machismo,
eventually came to cry: 'I'm a big homo dressed in faggot leather chaps,
fuck me, fuck me.'. Our collective hindsight shouts, 'How did we not know?'.
Their enigmatic lyrics and identity flip-flop can seem to parallel or
proceed contemporary dialogue, year by year. In as early as 1978, Halford
was already screaming 'Hell bent, hell bent for leather' and by 1986, his
identity was clear:
On and on we're charging to the place so many seek in perfect synchronicity
of which so many speak We feel so close to heaven in this roaring heavy load
and then in sheer abandonment, we shatter and explode. I'm your turbo lover
tell me there's no other I'm your turbo lover better run for cover -from
'Turbo Lover', 1986
Beyond gender identity and sexual politics, the steady and politically
charged erosion of privacy in urban centers seems eerily present in the
show's title track:
You think you've private lives think nothing of the kind there is no true
escape I'm watching all the time ... I take pride in all your secret moves
my tearless retina takes pictures that can prove -from 'Electric Eye', 1982
The subject of John Heyn and Jeff Krulik's must-see 1986 documentary HEAVY
METAL PARKING LOT (www.planetkrulik.com), Judas Priest inspired the best and
the worst in people. Who was this enigmatic band? Who are these 49 artists
(check the website for bios)? And who gives a fucking shit, anyway? Lets
ROCK!
...ram it down, ram it down, straight through the heart of this town. ram it
down, ram it down, razing the place to the ground -from 'Ram It Down', 1988
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Sis Boom Bah, 2004
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The museum's curator, Matt Crookshank, works in commercial computer
animation, helping to make the Pillsbury Dough Boy giggle. But it was his desire
to take an "underground gallery" and use the opportunity to exploit heavy
metal's oppositional qualities. Of his formative years in Chatham, Ontario, Matt
says, "It was metal or die."
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"A lot of the artists hate Judas Priest. I
especially enjoy when they don't like the song or they don't like the band,
because it forces them to do something uncomfortable - it gives you
something to fight with. I always feel that a bit of struggle and a bit of
discomfort produces really good things, like how diamonds come from crushed
coal."
- Matt Crookshank, The Globe and Mail, July
12, 2004 |
Andrew Morrow, a Toronto painter who produced the work "White Heat, Red Hot" for
ELECTRIC EYE, admits that he grew up listening to balladeers such as Elton John
and Billy Joel, and that the song he was assigned "doesn't speak to me." The
1978 tale of "solar gladiation", where warriors fight with "seventh-dimensional
skill", inspired a piece where a red hot rod covered with white flames sits in
the foreground, set off against a white wasteland where two polar bears are
locked in battle...
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"It's a little ridiculous," Morrow says of both the
painting and the song, "but I mean that in a fun way. This is the mystery
for me with metal, because I don't know if it's self-consciously silly. Are
they really loving the lyrics, thinking, 'This is exactly what I want to
talk about,' or is it tongue-in-cheek?"
- Andrew Morrow, The Globe and Mail, July
12, 2004 |
James Mejia, on the other hand, grew up as a teenage "metalhead" and Judas
Priest fan in Toronto. His set of drawings, which depict nature turned against
itself, contain an element of menace that many of the other artists seem to have
disdained. Mejia says he was trying to represent where singer Rob Halford "was
coming from" when he wrote the song "Leather Rebel".
Artist Will Munro, who runs Vazaleen, Toronto's infamous queer club night,
arrived at ELECTRIC EYE's opening wearing a hooded cape that he made out of a
Judas Priest concert flag. His work, inspired by the song "Turbo Lover", takes
the phrase "crazy cock rock" to a new level. Munro has painted onto a pair of
jockey shorts what he calls "a weird chrome alien creature with wings riding a
motorcycle that is actually a dragon" across the front - on the back is "a city
melting in lava." At once dangerous and silly, it captures the aesthetic of the
band and the exhibition perfectly. If Munro doesn't unload his underwear (at
$350), he isn't terribly worried:
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"If I don't sell it, I'll probably get it signed."
- Will Munro, The Globe and Mail, July 12,
2004 |
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