A London gallery exhibit is displaying reworked images of cartoon characters engaged in random acts of gory violence. But is the artist worried about the impact on children and thorny legality issues?
Digital Journal — Starting Oct. 9, you can walk into London’s
Aquarium Gallery and see a few shockers: a lifesize resin statue of Bugs Bunny blowing off Daffy Duck’s head with a shotgun. Not far away is another statue of the cartoon character Tom massacring the mouse Jerry; and along the walls animation frames capture Sylvester covered in Tweety Bird’s blood and Mickey Mouse with his head missing.
If this sounds like the warped imagination of a 16-year-old kid, you’re not far off. Splatter is an exhibit of cartoon character violence taken to the extreme, running at The Aquarium until Nov. 9. The artwork is the brainchild of James Cauty and Son…literally. Cauty’s teen son conceived of the idea, asking his father if he would want to recreate cartoon characters spiced with a heap of gore and violence. Call it
Itchy n’ Scratchy meets Warner Bros and Disney.
“Looney Tunes have been part of my life for decades so in one way I’m getting closure by creating this exhibit,” says James Cauty in an interview with DigitalJournal.com. The gallery describes this show as a project using “hijacked popular cartoon characters and liberated animations, to violent, shocking and entertaining ends.” Cauty says the exhibit works with his recent philosophy of artful destruction. His other project, Armchair Destructivists, gives him the chance to destroy armchairs and re-upholster them later, “making the chairs look like they just had a stroke.”
Whether you find Cauty’s work unpalatable or not, you can’t deny the attention Splatter is attracting. The Looney Tunes characters are manipulated to display a, well, cartoonish violence Cauty believes shouldn’t offend anyone. “This is slapstick violence,” he says, “and I don’t think it’s something parents wouldn’t want their children to see unless the kids are very young.” Splatter carries a parental guidance warning, he adds. Also, the gallery decided to add censor black bars to the faces of the characters, a move Cauty approved.
jCauty&SON copyright out of control 2008, courtesy of THE AQUARIUM L-13 all responsibility denied
In Splatter, James Cauty added gore to cartoon characters, such Tweety Bird and nemesis Syvlester
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So how did Cauty create the tweaked images? He redrew the characters, reanimated the frames in Photoshop, and exported the images to Adobe After Effects. He also compiled an 8-minute animated film featuring Cauty’s images looped and repeated on multiple LCD screens in the gallery.
Cauty said the prints will be on sale from £5 to £200. The resin statues will likely sell for a much higher price.
But using well-known cartoon legends could put Cauty in a legal bind. He’s not worried. “It’s not an issue,” he says confidently. “I’m just drawing my interpretation of what I think this characters look like. I’m making a satirical comment about characters that have been around for a decade, so they’re practically in the public domain.”
Splatter runs until Nov. 8 at The Aquarium Gallery, 63 Farringdon Road, London, England. For info, check out http://www.theaquariumonline.co.uk/acatalog/Coming_Soon.html
