Concrete Playground

There is something uneasy about the union of modern porn and traditional Japanese art. This irksome feeling is an entry point into Phil James’s work. In this exhibition, James displays his pop-culturally smarmy, hentai-inspired illustrations alongside erotic 19th century Japanese woodcarvings. The works are disparate but have a few things in common: contorted bodies, oversized penises (often, in James’s work, anthropomorphized), disturbed facial expressions and a slight feeling of malaise. This joint exhibition will titillate some and appall others. It will provoke questions of whether shock value precedes the artistic value of the works but, at the very least, it will make you think.

Image: You Make Me Like Charity, courtesy of Phil James and Ray Hughes Gallery.