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I visited The Tetley in Leeds to see two artists work, Stass Paraskos: Lovers & Romances and Jonathan Trayte: POLYCULTURE, 22 July - 9 October 2016.
Stass Paraskos: Lovers & Romances is an exhibition that was subject of an obscenity trial in 1966 following complaints from the general public and a police raid on the show of the same title at Leeds Institute. Stass Paraskos work was painted in the revolutionary era of ‘flower power’ and ‘free love’ and was deemed lewd and obscene by the majority of the public. The exhibition in The Tetley revisits these works and the debates they sparked 50 years on, presenting a selection of paintings produced in this period alongside archival material documenting the trial. I found his work very peculiar, it really wasn't my kind of artwork but I can appreciate it for the issues that it brought up such as freedom of expression and censorships within the arts.
Jonathan Trayte: POLYCULTURE is an exhibition showing work that explores our complex relationship with food, from the production industry and global supply chains that engineer and design the products we consume, to its emotional and social role in today’s food obsessed society. Jonathan Trayte’s sculptures are of 1:1 casts of super-sized, prized vegetables, his work is strange but very interesting at the same time, it could be seen as comical. Trayte used bare concrete or lurid painted bronze to create such magnificent sculptures.