Output details

Plastic Culture - Legacies of Pop 1986 - 2008

Plastic Culture was an Arts Council touring exhibition initiated by Richard Kirwan and developed and facilitated by Lindsay Tailor, Head of Exhibitions at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston, Lancashire. The project involved several ambitious loans, including Andy Warhol’s 1987 Self-Portrait from Tate London, and pieces by Jeff Koons, Takeshi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara and Cindy Sherman.

The inaugural installation of Plastic Culture was staged at the Harris Museum (28 March–30 May 2009). The exhibition sought to re-examine the art-historically held notion of Pop Art as a ‘celebration’ of Western consumer culture, by looking at the impact that Pop has had on subsequent generations of artists in Japan, the UK and the US. Works were selected that had a darker psychology than the standard commodity value often associated with American Pop. For example, the Warhol Self Portrait (1986) has the air of a foreboding death-mask, made in the year before the artist’s death during a routine gall-bladder operation. Cindy Sherman’s Untitled (2004), a large photographic self-portrait as a clown, was made in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001.

The exhibition acknowledged the importance and influence of artists such as Andy Warhol and his pioneering approach to using and embracing technology, as well as demonstrating how these ideas and concepts have been adopted and exchanged between the West and the East. The exhibition included paintings, sculptures, videos, photography and site-specific installations, and featured artwork from both emerging and established artists made during the past 20 years. There is a full-colour illustrated catalogue with introduction by Richard Kirwan and an essay by Dr Roger Cook.