Hindu Cow Slowly Meanders on Towards the Slaughter House (2007)
‘Hindu Cow Slowly Meanders on Towards the Slaughter House’
Alan Butler & Fergus Niland
Date: 16th– 20th November 2007
Preview: 15th November 2007, 6-8pm
Venue: Monster Truck Gallery & Studios, 73 Francis St., Dublin 8, Ireland
Opening Hours: 11am-5pm
More info at:
www.monstertruck.ie
/ www.newmediaart.co.uk / www.chedderhawk.com
This exhibition is based on a collaborative project which has spanned almost three years called ‘Hindu Cow Slowly Meanders on Towards the Slaughterhouse’. In early 2005, artists Alan Butler and Fergus Niland started mailing a notebook back and forth, responding to each other’s drawings, collages, ideas and graphics. With no premeditated concepts of where the project was going, what evolved from the notebook (also on show) was a dialogue of ideas or thumbnail concepts which concerned the futility of meaning, the artists’ ability to iconise/brand taboo, and above all to mock economy, entertainment and art.
In another sense, HCSMOTTSH is an attempt to combine a large series fragmented thumbnail concepts and imagery, which were never intended to be expanded into stand-alone artworks. To do this, Butler and Niland have produced a series of artworks / art-products which can also act as a further thumbnail of the ideas viewable in their notebook research.
Part of the series of works in this exhibition are based on the remarketing of the drug ‘Flunitrazepam’ which is a powerful sedative and skeletal muscle relaxant, used to treat insomnia, commonly known as Rohypnol. Considering the branding of pharmaceuticals changes their purpose of existence from healing to exploitation, the artists have embraced the absurdity of the society-friendly marketing of such a drug that is open to various forms of abuse. Using a similar thought-process Butler and Niland reinvent Flunitrazepam’s status once more in the form of a pseudo-art objects / self-aware consumerist, ironic fashion statements (part of Butler and Niland’s clothing label ‘Gout’).
Alternative refreshments will be administered to the guests at the opening night as they can view and interact with the exhibition’s 6000+ pieces of ‘art’. Is this art? Gout.
/End of fucking story.
