Goldie - Life Ain't Black and White
6 colour screen print, 410 gsm Somerset tub sized satin paper.
2007 saw the initial resurgence in Goldie's artistic endeavours with a hugely successful solo exhibition at the Leonard Street Gallery in London titled 'Love Over Gold'.
Called "Love Over Gold", the exhibition will include 34 oil paintings which employ aerosol. Goldie used a photographer friend to snap four glamour models, who pout in various provocative poses to mimic the calling cards of London's phone boxes. In one, the words "the great British cock-up" are emblazoned across the bottom in blue and red lettering, like a saucy General Kitchener mock-up. Another features a Life magazine cover with a topless "ingénue" sporting a mauve feather boa. He is not the new Picasso, but for him it was always about the process: anything, apparently, to occupy his bubbling brain. "I just looked at these phone boxes and thought, it's probably been done, but I wanted to have a crack. In our society, people get fined £50 for parking somewhere for 10 minutes. The whole way of what is right and wrong is muddled. I mean should there be a red-light district in the West End?"
If he has a problem with the objectification of women, though, isn't he peddling the wrong material? "They've got a full sense of empowerment," he says. "Even for the person who buys the painting – are you really happy? What is happiness? I've closed that door many a time and I've been completely unhappy. They go through this thing because they think they have to. What is prostitution? Is it just trying to get a hooker on the end of a phone? Where do we draw the line? If a young woman goes with an old man for money is that prostitution?"
He doesn't know the answer. The paintings are about Goldie, really, not the girls. It's some kind of therapy, to cap-off the rehab, the dalliance with numerology, the Buddhism. He has as many "issues" as he has gold-capped teeth. He remembers as a child he was burning Action Man when others were playing with them...
...If I could work it out, I wouldn't be doing art."
(Article: Independant, by Rob Sharp, 27 August 2007)
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