‘Bad Party’: Brighton artist Rhys Trussler creates a Polaroid purgatory
For this week’s photography feature, we’re delving into the realm of conceptual art and taking a trip to the sunny south coast of the UK. Brighton-based artist Rhys Trussler has all the hallmarks of a masterful creator. His work channels satire, horror, mythology and poignant social observation ubiquitously across compelling scenes, whether painted, sculpted, photographed, or all three combined in a delectable package.
Although Trussler has been a keen artist across several media for most of his life, his work became more prolific and focused after graduating from Winchester School of Art with a BA (Hons) in 2001. Since then, Trussler has completed two years of study at the prestigious Turps Banana Studio Painting Programme and exhibits profusely across London and the South of England.
Speaking to Art Rabbit recently in the run-up to his ‘Doesn’t Play Well With Others’ exhibition in Margate, Trussler said of his style: “The characters portrayed in my paintings stem from personal narratives and my own sense of queerness and otherness. Characters appear to interact, albeit for ambiguous motivations, but their disguises also isolate them from one another. In this world, images are inside images, and memory mixes with fantasy to create the illusion of occupation or life while perpetuating ghoulish isolation.”
Today, I guide your focus to Trussler’s most recent project, ‘Bad Party’. Exhibited in Brighton between May 16th and 21st, the sequence was compiled from a range of absorbing yet unsettling Polaroids. The various images were collaged using a series of Polaroids taken of models – both living and inanimate – to portray a tempestuous party that should have ended hours ago.
“Themes of chaos, misrule, subversion of norms and deception run throughout,” Trussler says of the project in a press release. “The images were created using low-tech methods and basic materials as a counter-reaction to Deep Fakes and AI.”
At the exhibition, Trussler displayed the Polaroid images alongside handmade objects, including plaster of Paris French Fancies, cigarette – or “FAG” – packets and a foldable cardboard chair. These objects serve as ancillary detritus while making several personal and cultural references.
A foldable deck chair, in particular, references a viral YouTube video candidly titled ‘British lads hit each other with a chair’, which is also recreated in the Polaroids. “The video is a bizarre glimpse behind the curtain of toxic masculinity in Northern England, homoerotica and mindless violence,” Trussler notes. This violence continues in the decadent late-night party that sees horrifying guests wielding knives and deriding hedonistic and salacious antics in their immediate environment.
The French Fancies, which double up as helmets of sorts for the partygoers, recall children’s parties of the ’80s as well as Trussler’s memory of a school tradition involving a Plaster of Paris birthday cake and being sung at during assembly – something Trussler was in equal measure terrified of experiencing and dismayed that he never did.
