BELFAST.- Artist John Walter curates the new Hayward Touring exhibition Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness, on view at the MAC in Belfast before embarking on a national tour to Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) and Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre. Shonky is a slang term meaning corrupt, shoddy or unreliable, standing here for a particular type of visual aesthetic that is hand-made, deliberately clumsy and lo-fi, against the slick production values of much contemporary art. Shonky explores the nature of this visual awkwardness through the work of international artists and architects Arakawa and Gins; Cosima von Bonin; Niki de Saint Phalle; Benedict Drew; Justin Favela; Duggie Fields; Louise Fishman; Friedensreich Hundertwasser; Kate Lepper; Andrew Logan; Plastique Fantastique; Jacolby Satterwhite; Tim Spooner and John Walter.

In a series of conceptual rooms, Shonky brings together artists working across a range of media including painting, sculpture, video, architecture and performance. Works include Andrew Logan’s maximalist mirrored sculptures of pop culture icons such as Divine, Molly Parkin and Fenella Fielding, a selection of paintings and lo-fi video work by pioneering artist and filmmaker Duggie Fields, and a series of small, totemic statues and works on paper by Niki de Saint Phalle. The exhibition also offers UK audiences a rare chance to see a selection of major works by American artist Louise Fishman, whose abstract works densely layer color and texture into large-scale paintings.

A series of photographs printed onto gauze depict the hotel and thermal baths of Rogner Spa, Blumau, Styria (1993–97), and the social housing block Hundertwasserhaus (1983-85) designed by Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The images showcase the architect’s characteristic use of brightly coloured facades, sloping roofs, unique windows and spontaneous vegetation. These are shown alongside the architectural model and drawings of Inflected Arcade House by experimental architectural duo Arakawa and Gins, who believed that their unusually designed houses with features such as sloping floors, curiously shaped rooms and functionless doors could have life-extending effects on their residents.

Tim Spooner combines puppetry, magic and scientific demonstration into a large-scale ‘performed sculpture’ The Voice of Nature (2017), made up of interconnected fragile sculptures that appear to teeter on the edge of collapse. A selection of textile ‘paintings’ and large, soft sculptures by influential German artist Cosima von Bonin sit alongside Mexican-American artist Justin Favela’s Floor Nachos (2017), a site-specific installation constructed of tissue paper and cardboard that explores cultural appropriation in his adopted home city of Las Vegas. Kate Lepper’s Emergency Canisters and Leaf Preservers are reclaimed plastic sculptures that have a dual purpose of preserving and exhibiting organic matter such as dried leaves and grass clippings, that encourage the viewer to consider the relationship between humans and nature.

A newly commissioned performance by Plastique Fantastique will take place in each venue, drawing inspiration from the Tarot, experimental music and the logic of the internet. Benedict Drew’s new video installation Dyspraxic Techno (2017) will overload visitors with sounds and images to create a disorientating, over-stimulating experience. Curator John Walter will present a performative installation The Shonky Bar (2017). Designed in his distinctive maximalist aesthetic, the bar will explore Walter’s regular theme of using hospitality, play and humour as a way to engage audiences in art.

The exhibition also explores how shonkiness can be represented in the digital sphere in Jacolby Satterwhite’s The Country Ball (1989–2012), which fuses drawing, performance and digital technology. Using his mother’s drawings as a source material, Satterwhite builds a rich, computer-generated landscape that he combines with family video and his own live performance. By drawing together artists and architects whose work has not previously been exhibited together or discussed within the same context, Shonky will allow for new ways of thinking that privilege shonkiness over other aesthetic forms that have dominated recent visual culture.

Shonky is the fourth in Hayward Touring’s series of Curatorial Open exhibitions. For Shonky, Hayward Touring have worked in partnership with the MAC, Belfast, DCA, Dundee and Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre to choose and develop the proposal, in a scheme that places collaboration at its heart, and nurture diverse curatorial talent.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new illustrated catalogue, featuring an essay by John Walter and a contribution by Zoë Strachan & Louise Welsh.

Curator John Walter said: “I’ve been using the word shonky for years, and whilst writing my doctoral thesis I realised that there was a critical value in the word. Understanding shonkiness helps to unlock a whole array of visual and cultural issues that may not otherwise be considered. It has been a privilege to have the time, resources and support of Hayward Touring as well as the stages of the touring venues and the catalogue to bring my vision of shonky into the world and give it a home.”

Roger Malbert, Head of Hayward Touring said: “To invent a new category in art, or to discern a tendency not previously identified and give it a name, is a creative act that requires a certain nerve. As an artist whose own practice is founded on irreverence, humour and anarchistic sociability, John Walter is well qualified to discount the prevailing ethos of the art world. His ‘maximalist’ aesthetic loudly declares an alternative view. In putting forward a theory of art that is handmade without being well crafted, that defies good taste and orderliness, he touches on a common intuition, of the mismatch between the sleek polished ideals we are sold and our actual experience of the world. In defining this aesthetic as ‘shonky’ and convincing curators and artists to sign up to it, Walter demonstrates both his powers of persuasion and the truth of his insight.”

Hugh Mulholland, Senior Curator at the MAC, said: “The Hayward Touring Curatorial Open, continues to play a critical role in developing relationships not only between curators and selected artists, but between each of the touring venues. It has been a great pleasure to get to know John Walter and the team at Hayward Touring over this past year and to be introduced to new artists; some whose profile is growing and others who are rightly being repositioned in the public consciousness. Our involvement in this exhibition has also forged new links with colleagues at DCA and Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre. We are delighted to be the first venue on the tour and are confident that our visitors will be enthralled by the Shonky aesthetic.”