paul mccarthy: ship of fools, ship adrift 2

american artist paul mccarthy has spent much of his career critiquing and exploring western society’s obsessions – its mass media, popular culture and icons of its consumer, entertainment and art industries. in reaction to the excesses of consumer capitalism, ‘disneyfied’ banality and misplaced feelings of entitlement, mccarthy has developed a subversive vocabulary that twists, perverts and exaggerates the world around him to a heightened and crazed state.

image © designboom

for the occasion of the 17th biennale of sydney, he has produced a new sculpture, which premiered at pier 2 / 3, walsh bay. entitled ‘ship of fools, ship adrift 2’, 2010, the sculpture is a contemporary rephrasing of the medieval allegory, depicting a world of power without principle as the ship and its denizens hurtle obviously towards their own destruction. constructed from foam, the child like faces of the caricatured inhabitants float dumbly above the ship that sports an implausible gun barrel mounted on its prow.

view of the inplausible gun barrel mounted on the prow of the ship image © designboom

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detail of structural components image © designboom

front view of the ship image © designboom

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containers of foam image © designboom

side view image © designboom

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up close of caricatured faces image © designboom

foam child-like faces hang above image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

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up close of the side of the ship image © designboom

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the sculpture is set atop a carpeted platform image © designboom

one of the child-like faces of the caricatured inhabitants image © designboom