Most wonderful slime of the year... monster festive slugs
AN ART gallery is getting in the festive spirit by displaying a pair of slimy “sexy slugs” lit up with neon lights on a 30ft facade.
But the work by anarchic artist Monster Chetwynd at Tate Britain was described yesterday as “ugly” and “repulsive”.
It is a far cry from last year’s traditional Winter Commission by Alan Kane – a display of Christmas lights that paid homage to suburban holiday decorations.
Turner Prize-nominated Ms Chetwynd, 45, said her work was inspired by Sir David Attenborough’s 2005 nature series Life In The Undergrowth, which detailed the slugs’s mating ritual – dangling from trees on glittering ropes of mucus while glowing blue.
The artist said: “The whole of the facade is covered with swathes of really beautiful fairy lights that look like a slime trail, as if two really fantastically sexy slugs climbed all over the Tate and smeared their snail trail everywhere.”
But art historian and critic Ruth Millington said the outlandish work was “another example of a contemporary artist trying to shock”.
She said: “The two slugs are supposed to be a sexy celebration of light for the festive season. Instead, these ugly, repulsive creatures have dribbled all over the iconic London gallery.
“Previously known as Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and before that, Spartacus Chetwynd, Monster Chetwynd continually reinvents artist personas.
“The installation looks like the tacky outside Christmas lighting which you want to ask your overenthusiastic neighbour to remove.”
Ms Chetwynd said: “I showed the [Tate] curator the David Attenborough clip of the slugs as an example of bioluminescence and she got really spellbound. It is unbelievable, these animals having sex, and it’s just phenomenally alien, but under our noses.
“Both of us were so excited by that we decided, ‘Why don’t we just go with the slugs?’.” Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson admitted the unusual display “may appear irreverent and somewhat perplexing”.
But he said the slugs were used to “raise serious ecological concerns, as well as to show that even supposedly repulsive creatures can be transformed into something wondrous”.
He added: “Monster’s commission is playful and anarchic but also engages with the major environmental challenges we face today.”
The sexy slug artwork will be on display at Tate Britain until February 25.