Toy – The Installation.

Created out of the dust of the music video Toy – and utilising promo props that cost half the video budget – this group art/video installation show, featuring work by Rupert James and Pimduan Watcharapurk of The Human Eye Corporation and Momokomotion (aka Momoko Ueda), is based around the self-set parameter that each piece must both be entitled Toy and include a toy.

The centre piece of the exhibition consists of three blow-up sex dolls – static, unresponsive,  compliant, the unloved toys of puppet master Thaksin Shinawatra past, present and (near) future – the doll holding a syringe representing the hundreds of suspected drug addicts/dealers that died during the former prime minister’s 2004 extrajudicial shootings; the doll wearing the local council apron (and with wooden puppet handle still attached), current Thai PM/TV cooking host Samak Sundaravej and the doll in the Manchester City football shirt, Manchester City football club – the most recently acquired plaything of Mr Shinawatra. 

Each has been (or likely will be) shafted figuratively by Thaksin and so here each is seen as having been (or having the potential to be) shafted literally – the vulnerability of the ‘drug addict’ underscored by the contrast of the sharpness of the addict’s syringe with the delicate ‘skin’ of the inflatable; the submissive role of Samak highlighted by the female kitchen attire and the attractive and as yet unsullied quality (at least when the exhibition opened) of the football club in the sensual shapes and lines left by the cover of a hanging garment and its standing up .

Other pieces include an orgy of over 50 toys (the cast of the music video) nailed to a pink table, the lyrics to the song Toy scratched onto the wall and surrounded in dolls and a lampshade made from the music video wardrobe – various changes of doll clothes.

The exhibition also features the music promo itself and a making of behind-the-scenes video piece.