Item Type:

Additional Information:

Backstage Boo is a newly commissioned, site-specific mural by Bod Mellor in the bar of Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg. In addition, Bod Mellor’s first novel Sirens, published by Montez Press, will be introduced to a German audience with a short reading at the opening.

Published by Montez Press, Sirens is the first novel by Bod Mellor and includes the complete set of the Sirens paintings.
In this series of paintings, female police officers from British television shows such as Happy Valley and The Bill are positioned in an array of apocalyptic settings: freezing, burning, and backdropped by flooding. The accompanying text chronicles an acute feeling of being watched, what it feels like to watch whoever is watching you, or, as Mellor write, how it feels to be kettled in your own flat, by your own paintings. 
Fragmented accounts map the protagonist’s shifting relationship to crime, gender, class and sexuality from multiple perspectives: as a child in Gamesley in the ‘70s, a performer in sex clubs in the mid ‘90s, an artist with and without gallery representation, and as a lecturer within an academic institution. These changes of position mix the language of a rally cry with an acerbic satire of the authorial voice and everyone they encounter.

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Art

Date:

3 September 2022

Item ID:

39095

Date Deposited:

10 Jul 2025 10:34

Last Modified:

10 Jul 2025 10:35

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39095