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Jake & Dinos Chapman

Jake & Dinos Chapman

Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse is a series of images by Jake & Dinos Chapman, eight of which are displayed in the mini exhibition in Room 6. The series is based on a game, developed by the Surrealists from the traditional game of Consequences, called ‘Le Cadavre Exquis’, or ‘Exquisite Corpse’. The game involves a piece of paper, folded horizontally concertina-fashion. Each player in turn draws a body part, without being able to see what others have drawn. The final result is a body or character of composite parts.

The figures in the series are multi-limbed and frequently many-headed, like many of the Chapmans’ sculptures. Disasters of War (1993) and Hell (2000) are composed of cut up and reconstituted bodies. The etchings feature imagery common to the Chapmans’ work in other media: skulls, eyeballs on stalks, grotesque animal heads, liquids dripping and spurting from wounds, orifices, nipples and shower-heads, writhing intestines, claw-like hands and feet. Around the edges of the figures tiny spiders hang from threads and flies crawl. Insects’ wings and branching roots appear in place of limbs.

This exhibition was developed as part of the Museums at Night events at the Jerwood Gallery on the 17 and 18 May 2013.