Paul McCarthy: The King, The Island, The Train, The House, The Ship

Last weekend, I visited the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Piccadilly, where sculptures and installations by Los Angeles-based artist, Paul McCarthy, were on exhibition. McCarthy's videos, sculptures and performance works throughout his career are known for pushing the boundaries of acceptability, testing the emotional limits of both the artist and the viewer. McCarthy never does anything under-the-top, whether painting with his penis in 1974 or inserting a Barbie doll into his rectum in his piece “Class Fool” in 1976. Yet it was still shocking when I walked into the South gallery of Hauser & Wirth on Saville Row to see his piece entitled, “Train, Mechanical”.

“Train, Mechanical” shows two pot-bellied caricatures of George W. Bush, sodomising two pigs. Repulsive and yet somehow tempting, the work invites you closer to inspect every detail and mechanism. Once there, the viewer becomes conductor, as George Bush’s oversized head and his beady eyes follow the viewer around the space. Squeals from the pigs and the motorised wheeze of pistons accompany the sculpture, making you feel even more uneasy as you view the piece (if that were even possible). To be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the spectacle, but I can tell you I was definitely disturbed!

In the North Gallery of Saville Road, viewers climb up ladders to survey

“Pig Island”, a work that took McCarthy seven years to complete. “Pig Island” blurs the boundaries between a work piece and the workplace. Constructed on blocks of polystyrene, the island is littered with wood, ruined casts, leftover art materials, shelving units, spray paint and rotting fast-food containers, and is surrounded by a sea of blue carpeting. The island is populated by political and popular figures, by the likes of Angelina Jolie, George W. Bush and the artist himself, all in the centre of a wild and reckless abandon. Its state of chaos and its unfinished nature makes it seem like it could expand into infinity. 

After speaking to one of the men working at the gallery, I learned that through “Pig Island”, McCarthy wanted to convey the deformity and corruption at the heart of the American family. Unlike the picture-perfect Disney fairy tales McCarthy so often references, ‘Pig Island’ flaunts its unfinished state and mechanisms, critiquing the underbelly of the American dream.