fantasising about wild horses
Lily Bunney

15 November - 14 December 2024
PV: 14 Nov 6-9pm
miłość gallery
29 Downham Road, N1 5AA
Wed-Sat 11-6

‘Fantasising about wild horses’ is the sequel to ‘girls peeing on cars’, Lily Bunney’s solo exhibition hosted at Guts Gallery and curated by miłość. This second part brings the theme of friendship to a more abstract, introspective, parasocial level. With the artist showing her own photographs alongside found imagery of Julia Fox and Jennette McCurdy, ‘Fantasising about wild horses’ observes imagined friendship and intimacy.

Celebrities act as touchstones of common experiences between certain groups of people in the same way pissing behind a car does. -- Lily Bunney

The exhibition’s title is inspired by a scene from Clarice Lispector’s novel The Besieged City, a dream of wild horses roaming a city that’s soon to be modernised, “their manes bristling; rhythmic, uncultured” (2019). Lispector writes about beauty and vanity, the desire to become a tamed object. Lily looks into this tension of losing subjectivity, losing wildness, as we adapt to a culture of patriarchy and capitalism, and girlhood and friendship become commodities.

And as the world imposes a culture of shame upon the queer, it gets isolating and lonely. Celebrity memoirs – Fox’s Down the Drain and McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died – recount trauma, offering a sense of false intimacy to those craving a connection. Millions become friends with Julia and Jennette, empathising with their tender and honest stories – commodification of communion fabricates parasocial friendships.

Lily presents large-scale paintings of Julia Fox and Jennette McCurdy, almost randomly morphing them into objects from images found on social media. With a cat for a crotch, or the legs of a barbie doll on a rocking horse, Lily fills in the blanks, making the celebrities half subjects, half objects. Around them are scenes of friendship, paintings made from photographs – finger hearts, a walk from a music festival, painting your girlfriend’s toenails – in a genuine offer of friendship dedicated to Julia and Jennette.

Following ‘girls peeing on cars’, utilising that same click-bait appeal, this show takes friendship from a very bodily and literal to a parasocial level, which becomes much more introspective and ambiguous. Similarly to the celebrity memoirs, Lily reclaims the narrative of this parasocial behaviour, presenting it as inspiration for reflection and reframing conventionalised shame.

Read Lily Bunney’s exhibition essay.

Request the catalogue.

<3, Lily Bunney, 2024

Angel Wings, Hip Kisses, Lily Bunney, 2024

Cat, Lily Bunney, 2024

Jennette McCurdy, Lily Bunney, 2023

Julia Fox (Lady Godiva), Lily Bunney, 2024

Nails, Lily Bunney, 2024

Sunrise, Lily Bunney, 2024

Sunset, Lily Bunney, 2024

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♥️ artists | osoby artystyczne
♥️ exhibitions | wystawy
♥️ about miłość | o miłości
♥️ press | prasa

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