Latest and Greatest

The fox presents an endearing image to many people. In our home we have a fox painting by my daughter. It is an intricately realized paint-by-numbers kitset masterpiece that she worked on for many hours before presenting it to me last year. A fitting gift for one who was an avid young fan of Basil Brush back in the late 1970’s.

The fox has always appeared to me as representing our all too human desires and shortcomings. In its natural environment the fox is a striking looking, intelligent, shy and persistent creature. In our anthropomorphic terms however, the fox represents cunningness and a cheeky confidence. This is exemplified within popular culture, particularly through books, film and television where the fox, who typically wants to gain access to the chicken coop or something along those lines, is a signifier and a euphemism for base human desires.

For children of the 70’s, including artist, Bepen Bhana, the character of Basil Brush was a ubiquitous figure that exemplified a certain type of English behavior. Witty, confident and cutting a bespoke figure, he was ill at ease with true gentlemanliness by deed of an exuberant personality and to a lesser extent, his mammalian group. Basil Brush mocked the class-based society of post-colonial England in the process of entertaining a generation of children and parents.

So what does this reference to a comic character from the 60’s and 70’s have to do with luxury goods? In this exhibition, Basil Brush’s earlier Saville Row tailoring is replaced by a selection of outfits bearing facsimiles of famous yet by now extremely garish brand names. Mischievously playing with a dichotomy that we each face when publicly displaying on our person any potentially covetous label, the Basil that Bepen Bhana presents in Boom! Boom! Deluxe has become the sobriquet of an overtly fashion-label ‘branded’ person, whilst also operating as a flag bearer for these goods.

In recent decades fashion and luxury goods industries have become global. Gone are many of the original ateliers where luxury goods were conceived and manufactured. Flicking through any high profile magazine, one finds many of these gaudy labels materializing in advertisements for clothing, timepieces, bags, jewellery and other accessories. Interestingly while one may be the target audience for the glossy magazine, that does not imply you are also the target audience for the brands being advertised. The formula behind this is simple. For anyone not wealthy (and some would say distasteful) enough to afford mass-manufactured ‘luxury’ goods, it is this segments desire for the unattainable which is exactly what drives the actual sales of said goods to the upper echelon, leaving the desperate to purchase the copy or the fake.

There is another fox reference in our home. It is a DVD of Wes Anderson’s 2009 film based on Roald Dahl‘s book, ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’. Channeled through the voice of the inimitable Nespresso Ambassador, George Clooney, Dahl’s Mr. Fox highlights how we each desire to feel fantastic in our own way in the eyes of others, and that the idealistic pursuit of status is one way to pursue this: ‘I think I have this thing where everybody has to think I’m the greatest, the quote unquote “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” And if they aren’t completely knocked out and dazzled and slightly intimidated by me, I don’t feel good about myself.’

Matt Blomeley, October 2012

Boom! Boom! Deluxe is an exhibition by Bepen Bhana, happening in November 2012 at Papakura Art Gallery