Sulkamania - 2019/2023

>> Poor Things - Fruitmarket - Edinburgh

Curated by Emma Hart and Dean Kenning - 2023

Rung x Art Licks Weekend - London - 2019

Made in Roath residency - Cardiff - 2019

 

'You have presented us with a homemade Hulk Hogan that we can imagine playing crazy golf with. We’ve been given a cheap fake instead of the real deal? How does this unreliability relate to class?'

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Sometimes I see my future self in the street. Versions or visions of the future me.  Me from the future. The future boys. The future boys only ever really chance the slightest of sideways glances in my direction. So as not to raise suspicion I suppose, or screw up the spacetime continuum or whatever. Some of these future boys are well tall. I don’t know why I still perceive my future self as being taller?

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Future me leaves presents. They’re just left lying in the street sometimes. I found an old WWF wrestling video near my house once. There were some Disney ones too, 101 Dalmatians I think, but the wrestling video was from me. It wasn’t quite my preferred era of WWF which I thought was weird, but there were a few of my favourites on there: The Undertaker (the original one that is) and The British Bulldog.

 

In the 1990s my mother made me a Hulk Hogan costume to wear to a fancy-dress party. Cotton y-front underpants and a vest set dyed yellow. A fluffy blonde moustache cut out and stuck on with double sided tape. She didn’t realise that Hulk wore a bandanna on his head and not a red Speedo swimming cap with the words “Python Power” written on it with yellow electrical tape. I think this version of Hulk Hogan was based more on my WWF action figures than the real thing, if you can call someone like Hulk Hogan a real thing.

 

I was a bootleg Hulk Hogan. A replica of a replica of a replica.  Like the echo of an echo. Imitation toys always have one eye that is a bit wrong don’t they? Staring into the past maybe, or into the future, probably. When I see these toys in charity shops or on eBay I picture middle class parents that are my age. I picture them imagining and feeling sorry for the kids that played with these cheapo knock offs.