Concrete Playground

Entering Drew Bickford's Mongrel, a collection of intricately executed illustrations, is like, as one observer put it, "arriving at the gates of hell". Yet it is a sweet hell. A hell from whose gates you may not wish to be turned away.

Humanity's obsession with the mongrel and monster is evident in all cultures, although it manifests in various ways. Bickford contends that this is "a world that embraces monstrosity only as a spectacle to outrage and appall", and so he brings delicacy and beauty to the contorted creatures that underlie the spectacle of this exhibition. The illustrations are oddly sensual even while the subjects are ghastly and horrific. Mongrel's illustrations embrace the deformed and the grotesque, while the exhibition embraces the detailed order of display in a gallery space. This marrying of deformity and order casts the mongrels in a gentle light. Where monsters so often signify chaos, Bickford renders them eerily calming.

Mongrel is most certainly worth casting your eyes over.

Image: Drew Bickford: Who am I here?, 2009, ink on paper