Vegas Gallery is proud to present the second exhibition in our brand new space on Vyner Street, London:
Peeping Tom, a group exhibition curated by Keith Coventry with works by 76 artists including Tracey Emin, Claire de Jong, Mat Collishaw, Michael Landy, Tim Noble & Sue Webster and Keith Tyson.

Boo Ritson has an peculiar way of making her works where she involves models into the creation process of her paintings and applies materials right on their skin and clothes and take photographs of the end result. Such interactive process generates more life and character into her art works. Each work has its own narrative, chosen by the artist and usually involves motifs of American life and culture: diners, gas stations, American fast food such as doughnuts and hot dogs. Those elements echo road trips around America that artist is fascinated by.
Boo Ritson takes photographs of her models before the paint dries which creates the shiny glossy effect as well as gives artist little time for radical decisions that she often undertakes. In doing so, artist challenges herself and the process of creating each piece becomes a little game where the more decisions she takes to bring the work to life before the paint dries, the better. Each work takes from half-an-hour or over an hour.
Artists prefers to paint people that she knows and have worked with before as her creative process requires knowledge of physical bone structure and in what way paint will be applied. Therefore each creative process provides the artist with a ‘learning curve’.
Choosing the colour is essential to Ritson’s work and her predilection for bright colours is obvious, however recently artist became fascinated with applying white to certain parts of her models to give it the ‘unfinished’ effect. This gives her portraits a sculptural look and echoes marble statues.

text by Anny Baranova

David LaChapelle is one of my favorite photographers. His style is grotesque, shocking and ironic. The inspiration behind his work springs from elements of art history and street culture, projecting a record of various facets of popular culture today. In ‘The Morning After’, LaChapelle addresses a topic that is a quotidian prevalence in modern society: destruction. In a world of technological innovations, global warming, artificial insemination, and recession, one is constantly bombarded with the juxtapositions of security/ instability, creation/ damage.
The photograph in question depicts two sides of the world combined together. The room in the picture seems cozy and neatly domestic, while simultaneously portraying the overly plastic and tacky décor, highlighting the artificial set-up of the scene. On the wall above the bed we see a representation of Manhattan in all its splendid beauty, where the American Dream reigns supreme and seems within reach. However, the disaster and ruin in the background of the photograph displays, in a starkly literate and confronting manner, the ease with which the idyllic world can crash into a dystopian, apocalyptic nightmare.
An alternative interpretation of the photograph carries sexual connotations, as intimated its title – ‘The Morning After’. The half naked woman on the bed appears threatened and exposed by the catastrophe unraveling around her room. This suggests the awakening following one night stand sexual relationships, or possibly the horror of rape, and the difference between the states of mind the night before and the morning after the encounter. The title also suggests that it can take the space of just one night for drastic changes to occur. The element of surprise in the picture and unexpected dichotomies lend an aura of surrealism to LaChapelle’s work.
The photograph combines two images, which separately do not seem frightening and do not make the viewer feel awkward. It is relatively common to observe the interior of a room with a half-naked beautiful lady on the bed. Observing the chaos and destruction of buildings is unpleasant, but does not habitually inspire immediate shock and distress in the viewer. However, when we see these two opposites combined and interlinked in such a graphic fashion, it is the resulting sense of the uncanny that overwhelms us with strange and uncomfortable emotions. We are confronted with a number of direct opposites that serve to disturb us: the perfect Manhattan skyline clashing with the falling buildings, the coziness and security of the familiar opposite complete and uncontrollable destruction. Terror is the outcome of the alien force intruding upon the sphere of the habitual. Furthermore, the uncanny is intensified by the uncovering of a taboo, in that the private sexual world of the woman is exposed, and shown alongside the outside world. LaChapelle often portrays women as doll-like, vulnerable and greatly objectified. Her state of partial undress is symbolic of the revelation of her secrets and her innermost thoughts are reflected by her exterior surroundings. Both the layers of her clothing, akin to the walls of her bedroom, have unraveled, and she is presented as a victim figure.
Personally, I am hesitant to call this picture ‘beautiful’ however I’m instantly drawn to it as it brings out a number of contradicting feelings, which make me overwhelmed and uneasy, but simultaneously make it increasingly challenging to look away due to the growing fascination and attraction that the image commands.
-Anny Baranova (from ‘The Journal’)